Indians/Guardians and the Topps History Police

[JustinD]

I’ve thought the 1903 Cleveland naming contest was a hilarious glimpse into the the future. This exerpt was from an NBC Sports article in 2014 on the many transitions to get to the Indians.

“ OK. Well, let’s get through the inaccuracies. Cleveland baseball had a long and mostly losing battle with team nicknames before 1915. They had been the Infants, the Spiders, the Bronchos, the Blues and unofficially they had been the Exiles, the Castoffs, the Misfits, the Molly McGuires (for a brief time in 1910) and countless other names. I had no idea until I went back and looked how much people HATED the nickname Spiders, which I always thought was kind of cool. The nickname confusion got so bad that in 1903, a Cleveland newspaper actually DID have a contest to name the team and the choices were so uninspiring and uninteresting (Cyclops? Excelsiors? Gladiators? Thistles?) that they finally voted on just naming the team after Cleveland’s best player, Napoleon Lajoie. That’s how they became the Cleveland Naps.”

Even in 1903, the Gladiators name was an uninspired joke of a thought, but just like the every 15 year return of bell bottoms, bad ideas always seems to somehow float back to the top.

Not the worst name in sports as that for me will always be the Anaheim Mighty Ducks and the NHL for selling out so horrifically they allowed naming an expansion team after an unwatchable children’s movie. It took away the integrity of an entire league in one swift move. I guess we could have had the Cleveland Garfield’s and just had orange striped unis and it would have been little difference. Also, really not much less blah then their choice.

I think it is important both as I mentioned earlier, having a city name causes confusion as just listing “New York”, “Los Angeles”, or others. It also places a more important timeline in your head and better assimilation for the reader. I can’t possibly count how many complaints I have read on this site about unlicensed cards, but now we need just city designations?

I obviously do not like the Gladiator name but I want it on the card just like the Indians, Redskins, Bullets, Colt 45’s and all the others to denote time.