Cleveland GuardiansCopied

Cleveland announced in July 2021 that the Indians, a name used since 1915, would become the Guardians after the season. It is the fifth name in franchise history. Owner Paul Dolan said the club wanted a name for the pride, resilience and loyalty of Clevelanders, and found it just outside the ballpark: the Guardians of Traffic, eight giant stone figures on the Hope Memorial Bridge. AP reported he had biked past them for years without paying them much attention.

The club said the decision followed 1,198 name options, 40,000 surveyed fans and 140 hours of interviews. It kept continuity where fans wanted it. The red, white and blue stay, and the script wordmark returns, now drawn to echo the trusses under the bridge. A new Diamond C evolves the old block C, taking its tapered shape from 1920 and 1948 World Series lettering and its diamond motifs from the tops of the bridge pylons. A new mark, the Guardians' Fastball, shows a winged G wrapped around a ball in a split-finger grip, a nod to the club's pitching history.

The switch hit a snag. A local roller derby team, Cleveland Guardians, formed in 2013, sued for trademark infringement, arguing that a major league club cannot simply take a smaller team's name and that it was there first. The sides settled on 16 November 2021, and both now use the name; terms were not disclosed. The settlement freed the club to start selling merchandise in time for the holidays, and Indians signs around the ballpark had already started coming down.

NBC News described the reveal itself: a video of a little over two minutes on the team's Twitter account, narrated by Tom Hanks with music from the Black Keys, mixing Cleveland landmarks with baseball history, including Frank Robinson becoming MLB's first Black manager in Cleveland's dugout in 1975. It ended on a baseball flanked by winged Gs. The name nods to the Guardians of Traffic statues on the Hope Memorial Bridge, the red, white and navy colours stayed, and the club said it had consulted 40,000 fans and drawn up an initial list of 1,198 names. Manager Terry Francona said the change took guts and bravery.

Some fans were angry about losing the old name, ESPN noted. Even so, this is one of the better sports renamings because it is rooted in something local and physical. The name points to a real landmark, the type comes from the bridge, and the fastball mark has a sense of humour. The roller derby episode shows the cost of skipping basic trademark homework.