Guarding the Guardians

The Cleveland Guardians should remain the Cleveland Guardians. Although Cleveland's baseball team, known for more than a century as the Indians, officially changed its name four years ago, the decision still smarts for some longtime fans. It also apparently still bothers President Donald Trump, who on Sunday demanded that the team revert to its old name. He also demanded that the Washington Commanders revert to their former name, the Redskins, which they dropped in 2020. (The team became the Commanders in 2022 after playing as the Washington Football Team for two years.) "There is a big clamoring for this," Trump wrote in a social-media post about the Commanders changing their name. "Likewise the Cleveland Indians … Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen." We haven't heard such a call from Native Americans for either team to revert to its old name, which many Native Americans considered racist and insensitive. Indeed, the timing of the two teams changing their names coincided with a national reckoning on racism in this country. Trump was never on board with such national soul searching. Six months into his second term, his administration has prioritized a sort of historical revisionism that denies the uglier parts of American history. In March, for instance, the Department of Defense removed from its website a page that had featured the story of Jackie Robinson, a Black U.S. Army veteran, who broke baseball's color barrier in 1947. The page was later restored after public outrage. What exactly led Trump to start mucking about in pro sports teams' identities is unclear, although it could have something to do with distracting from other subjects he'd prefer not to discuss. In any event, Trump recognized that his original post had generated buzz, so he decided to wade further into the controversy later in the day. "My statement on the Washington Redskins has totally blown up, but only in a very positive way," he wrote in another post. "I may put a restriction on them that if they don't change the name back to the original 'Washington Redskins,' and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, 'Washington Commanders.'" Trump then proceeded to threaten to interfere with the Commanders' plans to build a new stadium. The Washington Post reported that Congress had given Washington, D.C., the power to negotiate with the team over the proposed new stadium. Given that the GOP-controlled Congress pretty much does whatever Trump wants, it's possible Republican lawmakers might try to mess with that deal at his behest. Trump doesn't have that sort of potential sway over the business affairs of the Guardians, although we suppose it's possible that the GOP-dominated Ohio legislature could try to make life difficult for the team. State Rep. Brian Lorenz, R-Powell, urged the Guardians to revert to their old name. Changing the name in the first place, he insisted, wasn't something the fans wanted, but rather was done "because elites told us to." "The Cleveland Indians weren't just a team — they were summer nights, family memories, heartbreaks, and miracles." All those things remain at the heart of the Cleveland baseball experience, whatever the team calls itself. Trump also took a shot at former state Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, whose family owns the Guardians. (As Fox News reported, it was his brother, Paul Dolan, who announced the name change in 2021.) "The Owner of the Cleveland Baseball Team, Matt Dolan, who is very political, has lost three Elections in a row because of that ridiculous name change," Trump wrote. "What he doesn't understand is that if he changed the name back to the Cleveland Indians, he might actually win an Election. Indians are being treated very unfairly. MAKE INDIANS GREAT AGAIN (MIGA)!" Trump has attacked Matt Dolan over the name change before, although that's not the reason he lost Republican primaries in two separate bids for the U.S. Senate. Rather, Dolan lost those races after Trump endorsed other candidates, in part because Dolan refused to buy into Trump's false claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him. Fortunately, the Guardians don't appear to have any interest in changing their name again. Such a process would be expensive, and even if going back to the name Indians would make some fans happy, it would anger others. "We got the opportunity to build our brand to Guardians over the last four years," the team's president of baseball operations, Chris Antonetti, told reporters Sunday. "We're excited about the future." Better for the Guardians to ignore Trump's efforts to drag them into a culture-war dustup and focus on what really matters to most of the club's fans: fielding a team that can win more games.