The Cleveland Indians will have a new name, but that may not happen until 2022.
The baseball team in Cleveland is going to have a new name very soon.
Owner of the Cleveland Indians, Paul Dolan, has announced that the team will keep the name through the 2021 season, but to change their name as early as 2022.
There is no name chosen or specific date picked, but they are officially going to change their name in the near future. They have been known as the Indians since 1915.
After months of internal discussion, many meetings with groups, and Native Americans that have been trying to stop Cleveland from using the name that many deemed racist. Dolan has admitted that the name is no longer acceptable in the world we live in.
Dolan has decided that the team will not choose an interim name and will go from Indians to the new name, which has not been chosen yet. They were not interested in doing what “The Washington Football Team”, previously known as the Redskins, has done in the National Football League.
Dolan accredits his epiphany or awakening that the team name must change to the social justice movements that are occurring across the country.
“We are going to honor our past,” he said. “We’re not walking away from our past. We’ll be the Cleveland Indians of 1915 to whatever year is that we ultimately change. We will always celebrate that. I don’t think we have to ignore it.
“But from the day we make the change, the new history that we build together as a community with our team will be under the banner of a different name.”
The Cleveland Indians should change their team name back to the Cleveland Spiders. It is far from controversial and is a former team that competed in the major leagues in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.