The Cleveland Indians baseball team will next year be known as the Cleveland Guardians. Cleveland is not my town or team, but as a (former) baseball fan, I've known about the Cleveland Indians my whole life. In fact, they were the Cleveland Indians for both of my parents' whole lives.
The "Indians" was the team name throughout two World Wars, the Roaring '20s, the Great Depression, the Korean war, the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam war, the entire space age, 9/11, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Great Recession, right up through the January 6 Capital riot and on into Antifa, BLM, and CRT.
Leaving race obsession out of any public decision today seems impossible, but I've got a good imagination. Why such a servicable 105-year-old name urgently needed change, I can't fathom. But naming rights belong to the team's city, and Cleveland has decided that "Guardians" fits today's team better than "Indians." Perhaps they have a good point.
Cleveland did a thoughtful job in choosing the Guardian name. Cleveland's "Guardians of Traffic" statues are quite impressive. They are 90-year-old landmarks on the Hope Memorial Bridge, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 to ensure the preservation of the traffic guardian statues. That's a solid hometown hook for the new name.
Appropriately enough, the bridge is located within a stone's throw of the Cleveland baseball team's home, Progressive Field. Now, there's a name I would change.
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| Guardian of Traffic - Cleveland, OH |
