The Cleveland baseball team will be the Guardians, rather than the Indians, going forward, the team announced today. The team indicated late last year that it would retire the nickname “Indians” after the 2021 season, and we now know what will replace it.
The organization opted to change the name due to the problematic nature of the use of Indian and Indian-related nicknames. There’s been much debate on the topic, the claim that the name “Indians” was to honor former Cleveland player (and Native American) Lou Sockalexis, or whether that story was ret-conning. Joe Posnanski, who grew up an Indians fans, covered the topic very well and at length here, and I think rather than re-hash all of the…
