Cleveland Guardians

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Team information

• Inaugural season: 1901
• Home ballpark: Progressive Field, Cleveland, Ohio
• Owner: Larry Dolan
• Team colors: Red, navy blue, and white

Overview

The Cleveland Guardians are a Major League Baseball (MLB) team that plays in the American League Central division. The franchise had an unsettled early history, changing its name several times before finally deciding on the Indians in 1915. After struggling for its first two decades of existence, Cleveland overcame an on-field tragedy in 1920 to win its first World Series championship. It would be almost thirty more seasons before the team returned to the World Series and won another title in 1948. Another extended championship drought then took hold, as over the next seven decades, the Indians struggled more than succeeded, going forty years between playoff appearances at one point. Even when the Indians fielded a championship-caliber team, their hopes for a World Series title were often dashed in heartbreaking fashion. In 2020, the team decided to change its name due to concerns over racism. Beginning in the 2022 season, the team adopted the name Guardians, a reference to an iconic Cleveland landmark.

History

In 1901, eight baseball franchises joined to form the American League as a rival to the more-established National League. The franchise in Cleveland was to be called the Bluebirds, but the players hated that name, so it was shortened to Blues. The team played one year as the Blues before changing its name to the Bronchos—a now outdated spelling of Broncos. During the 1902 season, Cleveland acquired Napoleon “Nap” Lajoie, a prolific hitter who was traded by the Philadelphia A’s as part of a legal dispute. Lajoie was one of baseball’s early superstars and became so popular in Cleveland that the franchise adopted “Naps” as its team name in 1903. In 1912, the franchise again changed its name, this time to the Molly Maguires. That name was taken from a radical group of Irish coal miners from Pennsylvania who were active in the 1870s. Despite the change, most fans and sportswriters still referred to the team as the Naps.

With the name Molly Maguires failing to catch on and Lajoie being traded after the 1914 season, Cleveland began the search for yet another name. A newspaper contest asked fans for their input and the winning result was Indians. Some accounts claimed that the name was inspired by former player Louis Sockalexis, a Native American who was a member of the National League’s Cleveland Spiders in the 1890s. However, baseball experts doubt that story. They believe that the name was chosen because of an unlikely championship won by the NL’s Boston Braves, the future Atlanta Braves, in 1914. The “Miracle” Braves, as they were known, stormed back from last place to make the World Series, where they upset the heavily favored Philadelphia A’s. With that memory still fresh in people’s minds, fans may have hoped that a similar name would bring good luck for their struggling franchise.

It seemed to work. Cleveland had lost 102 games as the Naps in 1914, but finished at .500 in 1916 and won 88 games a year later. In the late summer of 1920, the Indians and the Chicago White Sox were battling atop the AL standings when two significant events occurred. On August 16, shortstop Ray Chapman was hit in the head by a fastball thrown by the Yankees’ Carl Mays. Chapman never regained consciousness and died the next morning. He is the only player in MLB history to have died from an injury sustained during a game. In September, during the Black Sox Scandal, eight members of the White Sox were suspended for accepting money to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series. With their main competition crippled, Cleveland was able to outlast Chicago and win the AL pennant. In the World Series, the Indians defeated the Brooklyn Robins to capture their first championship.

The next two decades were mostly forgettable as the Indians rarely threatened the best teams in the American League. In the late 1930s, the franchise began building a roster around young players such as pitcher Bob Feller and shortstop Lou Boudreau. Feller made his MLB debut at age seventeen in 1936, while Boudreau had become the team’s player/manager at twenty-four. In 1947, the Indians made history when they signed outfielder Larry Doby, the first African American player in the American League. Doby made his debut in July, just three months after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier with the NL’s Brooklyn Dodgers.

In 1948, led by Boudreau, Feller, and pitcher Bob Lemon, the Indians won their second World Series, defeating the Boston Braves in six games. Cleveland contended throughout much of the 1950s but almost always finished behind the dominant New York Yankees. The lone exception was 1954, when the Indians advanced to the World Series, only to lose to the New York Giants.

The 1954 season would mark Cleveland’s last playoff appearance for the next four decades. In many of those years, the Indians were one of baseball’s worst teams. From 1960 to 1993, Cleveland finished with a winning record only six times. In 1987, after a promising 84–78 record the year before, a national sports magazine declared Cleveland as the best team in baseball and predicted an end to its playoff drought. However, Cleveland lost 101 games to finish with the worst record in Major League Baseball.

The Indians were finally able to build a winner in the mid-1990s behind the powerful bats of first baseman Jim Thome and outfielder Manny Ramirez. Cleveland made five straight playoff appearances from 1995 to 1999 and advanced to two World Series. In 1995 they lost to the Atlanta Braves, while they fell to the Florida Marlins in 1997. The 1997 series was particularly heartbreaking, as the Indians held a 2–1 lead in the ninth inning of a deciding Game Seven. Florida rallied to tie and won the game in the eleventh inning.

Cleveland advanced to the American League Championship Series in 2007 and held a 3–1 lead heading into Game Five. However, the Boston Red Sox won the final three games to advance to the World Series. After manager Terry Francona was hired for the 2013 season, Cleveland reestablished themselves as a frequent playoff contender, though they continued to fail to find ultimate success. In 2016 Cleveland made it to another World Series, this time against another long-suffering team, the Chicago Cubs. The Cubs had not been to a World Series since 1945 and had not won a championship since 1908. Cleveland jumped out to another 3–1 series lead before the Cubs came back to force a Game Seven. Chicago won that game in ten innings to deny Cleveland yet again.

Meanwhile, in the late 2010s, amid a general increase in public attention to issues of racism, longstanding criticisms of the Indians name and associated American Indian–themed logos received fresh attention. In 2018, the team phased out the controversial Chief Wahoo logo—a caricature of an American Indian widely seen as insensitive—from official uniforms, though it continued to use the design on various merchandise. Pressure continued to build for more drastic change, and in December 2020, the team confirmed that the Indians name would be dropped following the 2021 season. In July 2021 the franchise released a video announcing it had chosen the new name the Guardians, inspired in part by the iconic art-deco sculptures known as the Guardians of Traffic decorating the Hope Memorial Bridge entering downtown Cleveland.

Notable players

More than forty former players, managers, and team officials associated with the Cleveland franchise have been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Nap Lajoie was inducted in 1937, in just the second year of the Hall of Fame’s existence. Lajoie played with Cleveland from 1902 to 1914 and still holds the franchise record for hits with 2,047. He also served as manager of the team that bore his name from 1905 to 1909. The star of Cleveland’s first championship team was outfield Tris Speaker, who played with the Indians from 1916 to 1926. A prolific hitter, Speaker had a career batting average of .354 with Cleveland and set an MLB career record for doubles with 792. Outfielder Earl Averill, an Indian from 1929 to 1939, set the franchise record for runs batted in (RBIs) with 1,084.

Bob Feller won a franchise best 286 games with the Indians from 1936 to 1956. He led the American League in wins six times and would have been a lock to win more than 300 games if he had not missed three full seasons due to military service. Feller is also the all-time Indians’ leader in strikeouts with 2,581. Lou Boudreau was with Cleveland from 1938 to 1950. He won the American League Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) in 1948 and is fifth on the franchise all-time hit list with 1,706. Boudreau is also the winningest manager in Cleveland history with 728 victories. Bob Lemon won 207 games with Cleveland from 1946 to 1958 and led the American League in wins three times. His performance in the 1948 World Series was one of the main reasons Cleveland won the championship that season.

Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry played just three of his twenty-two seasons with Cleveland, but won the 1972 Cy Young Award as a member of the Indians. Speedy outfielder Kenny Lofton played in Cleveland from 1992 to 1996 and again from 1998 to 2001 before briefly returning to the Indians in 2007. Lofton is the franchise leader in stolen bases with 452. Manny Ramirez spent eight seasons in Cleveland from 1993 to 2000 and is third on the franchise home run list with 236. Jim Thome tops that list with 337 home runs with the Indians from 1991 to 2002, and again briefly in 2011. Over the course of his twenty-two-year career, Thome hit 612 home runs, eighth all-time in baseball history.

The strong Cleveland teams of the late 2010s were powered by shortstop Francisco Lindor, who entered the league in 2015 and was an All-Star from 2016 to 2019; catcher/first baseman Carlos Santana; and third baseman José Ramírez. Lindor was traded after the 2020 season. On the mound, pitcher Corey Kluber led the AL in victories twice and won the Cy Young Award in 2014 and 2017.

Bibliography

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“Cleveland Guardians.” Baseball Almanac, 2024, www.baseball-almanac.com/teams/clei.shtml. Accessed 18 Mar. 2024.

“Cleveland Indians Team History.” Sports Team History, 2021, sportsteamhistory.com/cleveland-indians. Accessed 4 Aug. 2021.

“Cleveland Guardians Team History & Encyclopedia.” Baseball Reference, 2024, www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CLE/. Accessed 18 Mar. 2024.

Cohen, Robert W. The 50 Greatest Players in Indians History. Blue River P, 2018.

“History.” Cleveland Indians, 2021, www.mlb.com/indians/history. Accessed 4 Aug. 2021.

Jackson, Frank. “Good Golly, Miss Molly.” Hardball Times, 13 Dec, 2012, tht.fangraphs.com/good-golly-miss-molly/. Accessed 7 May 2020.

Jensen, Don. “Ray Chapman.” Society for American Baseball Research, sabr.org/bioproj/person/c2ed02f9. Accessed 18 Mar. 2024.

Meisel, Zack. 100 Things Indians Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. Triumph Books, 2015.