The Indians will keep their name through the 2021 season, but further details are unknown./
It will happen, but when, to what are to be decided
Cleveland The Cleveland Indians are changing their name — they just don’t know to what or when.
Expressing that “it’s time,” owner Paul Dolan said that after months of internal discussions and meetings with groups, including Native Americans who have sought to have the team stop using a moniker many deem racist, the American League franchise is dropping the name it has been known by since 1915.
In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press on Monday, Dolan said: “The name is no longer acceptable in our world.”
Dolan said the team will continue to be called Indians until a new name is chosen. That “multi-stage” process is in its early stages and the team will play — and be branded — as the Indians at least through next season.
“We’ll be the Indians in 2021 and then after that, it’s a difficult and complex process to identify a new name and do all the things you do around activating that name,” Dolan said. “We are going to work at as quick a pace as we can while doing it right.
“But we’re not going to do something just for the sake of doing it. We’re going to take the time we need to do it right.”
Dolan said the team will not adopt
an interim name until choosing its new one.
“We don’t want to be the Cleveland Baseball Team or some other interim name,” he said, adding he hopes the new name “will hopefully take us through multiple centuries.”
Red Sox: Boston signed outfielder Hunter Renfroe to a one-year deal for $3.1 million. He hit 26 or more homers in three straight seasons for the Padres before struggling with the Rays in the pandemic-shortened season — batting .156 with eight homers and 22 RBIS in 42 games.
Royals: Free agent reliever Greg Holland stayed with Kansas City, signing a one-year contact for $2.75 million. The 35-year-old Holland was 3-0 with six saves and a 1.91 ERA
this season.
Obituary: Former Yankees infielder Phil Linz, who knocked a Game 7 home run off the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson in the 1964 World Series but made even more noise by hitting a few sour notes on his harmonica, died Wednesday night in Leesburg, Va. He was 81. Linz had been in poor health since a stroke five years ago. During his seven-year big league career he batted .235 with 11 homers for the Yankees, Phillies and Mets. Swept in a four-game series by the firstplace White Sox at Chicago in August 1964, the Yankees were riding to the airport when Linz began fiddling with a harmonica. Manager Yogi Berra slapped the harmonica out of Linz’s hand, causing the instrument to hit Joe Pepitone in the shin. But once harmony was restored, the Yankees rallied down the stretch and reached the World Series for the fifth straight year.