A team by any other name …

We are in a transition, close to shutting down the old Congress, convening the next, and welcoming a new president. The holidays have arrived, and the vaccine approaches, no matter our faith or lack thereof. “Peace on Earth” is the goal.

No better time, then, to offer some thoughts on baseball. Yes, I could write about the resurgent Cleveland Browns and the gifts they are bringing to my patient 21-year-season-ticket-holding family.

But that’s best left for the coming playoff drive.

So instead, let’s talk about the Tribe. As in the Cleveland Indians, the ball club I love, though as with the Browns, it hasn’t been easy. Anyone from northeast Ohio knows that the Browns last won it all in 1964; the Indians in 1948.

The Indians have declared they are changing their franchise name in 2022. The announcement has been met not exactly with a yawn, but very little upset, and certainly quite a lot of, “OK, sure. But what are we going to get for Frankie Lindor?”

The team seems to compete every year for the pennant and has come close a couple of times in the past 25 years. During the epic World Series duel with the Cubs in 2016, Obama adviser David Axelrod would join me on the radio every morning (as a bitter political contest played out) to spend a segment talking . . . baseball, just baseball. (Axelrod’s Cubs triumphed. In Game 7. Sigh.) It’s a reminder that sports is often the bridge between left and right in America.

So when Paul Dolan, who leads the Indians’

OPINION

ownership group, decided that it was time to retire the name — because the name occasionally blocked that bridge — the vast majority of fans had the same reaction I did. My love for the team and its rich history would not change. The Tribe is an entire region’s team, which means it is as much about family as anything else. As I tweeted: “My grandfather attended 40 consecutive home openers. He wasn’t a fan b/c of a name.”

When I got my driver’s license in 1972, I’d squeeze some combination of Robbie, Kim, Paul, Philip, Scott and Johnny into a Chevy Impala and head for Cleveland’s 1930s-vintage Municipal Stadium. By the third inning, the ushers would let us out of the cheap seats and down to the boxes. The ’60s, ’ 70s and ’80s were a long cruel stretch for the Indians. Would we have traded a name for a pennant race? In a heartbeat.

The folks who own and run the team now know what they are doing. It’s a small-market club; they have to keep non-baseball controversies to a minimum and concentrate on winning. Every winter in the 1970s, the stories were always about how the Yankees or Red Sox were going to fleece the club, take its best players and, worst of all, how the team might move.

Oh, the angst. Instead, the club revitalized and rebuilt. For fans, these are the golden years.

And yet another transition.

I’ll cheer for whatever the team is ultimately called — because northeast Ohio is home, because it’s a wonderful game, and because a name should not be allowed to divide that which binds it.