2/ Sockalexis was a real person. A member of the Penobscot Nation, he was the first acknowledged member of a tribal nation to play in the majors. https://sabr.org/bioproj/perso...

3/ Sockalexis debuted in Cleveland in 1897 for the Cleveland Spiders. He had a couple of good months at the start of the year. In July, he was injured, and when he came back, he wasn't the same. https://www.baseball-reference...

4/ In 1898, he became a bench player. In 1899, he was released after 7 games on a historically bad 1899 Cleveland Spiders team (20-134). After 1899, neither Sockalexis nor the Spiders returned to the majors. The Spiders folded. https://www.baseball-reference...

5/ Sockalexis continued in baseball, moving to New England and appearing for a few teams in minor leagues there. He had nothing further to do with Cleveland, baseball or otherwise. https://www.baseball-reference...

6/ In a pre-season intrasquad game in 1897, Cleveland manager Patsy Tebeau jokingly divided the team into the "Indians" featuring Sockalexis and the "Papooses", a play on the name of pitcher John Pappalau. This the first known instance of the name being used for Cleveland.

7/ References to the Spiders as "Indians" spread, based on the presence of Sockalexis, and in an era where team names weren't as "official", it sorta stuck. It only sounds like an honor. They were making fun of him. Fans would come out to the ballpark to yell racist abuse.

8/ From Sporting Life (5/15/1897): "Columns of silly poetry are written about him. hideous looking cartoons adorn the sporting pages of nearly every paper. He is hooted and howled at by the thimble-brained brigade on the bleachers." https://digital.la84.org/digit...

9/ In an 1898 interview, Sockalexis himself spoke about the racist abuse that he endured from fans in the bleachers. https://www.newspapers.com/cli...

10/ Writer @JPosnanski has cataloged some of the evidence for how Sockalexis was treated. https://joeposnanski.substack.... https://joeposnanski.substack.... In Sockalexis's own time, the name was hardly an honor.

11/ Sockalexis died of a heart attack in December, 1913. https://www.newspapers.com/cli...

12/ In 1900, a different franchise, the Grand Rapids Rustlers, moved to Cleveland, and in 1901, became part of the newly chartered American League. The team used the name "Blues" in 1901 and then "Bronchos" in 1902. https://www.baseball-reference...

13/ In 1902, the team acquired the contract of eventual Hall of Famer Napoleon (Nap) Lajoie. The next year, in deference to their new 2B, took on the name "Naps." https://www.baseball-reference...

14/ Lajoie even took a turn as player/manager of the team from 1905-1909. https://www.baseball-reference... In 1909, he relieved of management duties, and replaced by longtime player Deacon McGuire. https://www.baseball-reference...

15/ The way that the story is normally told, the team held the name "Naps" until Lajoie departed at the end of the 1914 season. It's a little more complicated. In 1912, the team formally changed their name to the Cleveland Molly Maguires. Seriously. https://ohiohistorycentral.org...

16/ It likely started informally after the change in management. If it was Naps before, it must be the McGuires now. For more on this odd quirk in Cleveland history, I recommend this article: https://tht.fangraphs.com/good...

17/ They were rarely called the Molly Maguires by anyone, and even the venerable @baseball_ref lists them in those years as the "Naps". This is how team names were at the time. The team was sometimes known as just the Clevelands. How do you think the Phillies got their name?

18/ The bizarre change to "Molly Maguires" is important though, because it introduces our story's real main character: franchise owner Charles Somers. Somers was a coal industry millionaire, and was the founding (and funding) vice president of the AL. https://sabr.org/bioproj/perso...

19/ The (real) Molly Maguires on the other hand, were a secret society based in Ireland which was mostly concerned with workers' rights in the coal industry. They did not shy away from violence to advance their cause. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

20/ Somers was the type of person who would have drawn the ire of the actual Molly Maguires. But, in a marketing move, Somers tried to re-brand his franchise to connect to the industrial workers in Cleveland. Somers wasn't beyond cheap marketing ploys with the team name.

21/ Flash forward to January 1915. Somers was in financial trouble both in baseball and real life. https://www.newspapers.com/cli...

22/ The Cleveland Naps/Molly Maguires were terrible in 1914, finishing 51-102 and more importantly, drawing only 186,000 fans for the year, a third of what they had drawn a few years earlier. https://www.baseball-reference...

23/ The departure of Lajoie, then 40 and still immensely popular, but slipping in his baseball talents, is recognizable now as a cost-cutting move with a declining veteran. Somers would eventually sell the team in 1916.

24/ But things were bad enough financially that the team traded away Shoeless Joe Jackson (yes, that one), who had been in the Top 10 for MVP voting the previous 4 years. They got 3 entirely forgettable players and some financial flexibility in return. https://www.baseball-reference...

25/ Somers needed money. He knew that the 1915 team would be awful (they finished 57-95), but maybe he just needed a marketing gimmick. Molly Maguires wasn't cutting it. In January 1915, Somers asked a group of local sportswriters to come up with a new name for the team.

26/ It's occasionally suggested that there was a "name the team" letter writing contest, but there's no evidence that it happened. There were about two weeks(!) between the forming of the committee and the announcement of the name. There wasn't time for that.

27/ By 1915, Sockalexis was dead and it had been 16 years since he had played a bit role for an entirely different franchise. He had been an object of public scorn and had struggled with alcohol addiction during his playing days. He would be a strange pick to "honor."

28/ There's no evidence that he remained a popular figure. From 1900 to 1913 (when they printed his obituary) the Cleveland Plain Dealer mentions Sockalexis only a handful of times, most of them minor news bits that Sockalexis had caught on with some minor league team.

29/ In 1912, the Plain Dealer printed a "Where are they now?" story which specifically called out Sockalexis as "fat and lazy." https://cleveland.newsbank.com...

30/ If the team wanted to honor a former player, they had some good options. Addie Joss had played for the team from 1902-1910. He put together a Hall of Fame career that was shortened by his untimely death four years earlier, in 1911. https://www.baseball-reference...

31/ When Joss died, he was so beloved that players from around the league put together what is now recognized as the first All-Star game to benefit his family. https://www.baseball-almanac.c...