Cleveland renames baseball team

After more than a century as the Indians, the city’s Major League Baseball team will no longer go by that name. Actor Tom Hanks announced the Cleveland team’s new name, the Guardians, in a Friday morning Twitter video. The decision follows nearly a year of discussions, 140 hours of interviews with community leaders and office personnel, and survey results from 40,000 fans. Owner Paul Dolan said last summer’s social tensions pushed him to fast-track the name change. The team stopped wearing the caricatured “Chief Wahoo” logo in 2018 after years of protests from Native American groups.

Where did the name come from? Dolan said two 1932 stone art deco statues known as “the traffic guardians” at the entryway of Cleveland’s Hope Memorial Bridge inspired the name. “Guardians” is the fifth franchise name since Cleveland became a major league team.

Dig deeper: Read Ray Hacke’s report on the Washington NFL team’s name change and the trend in sports to move away from titles based on ethnic groups.