Cleveland Indians become the Cleveland Guardians

[Sport]

On 7/24/2021 at 7:28 AM, JustForFun said:

 

I grew up in Dayton and aside from concerts, my friends and I all tried to avoid going to Cincy if we could. It was a racist and archconservative place, belonging more to Kentucky than Ohio (this was before Ohio politically turned into Alabama). They built a highway named after Reagan while he was still alive. If we had to go to the "big city" we went to Columbus, which is bland and generic but not as nakedly right-wing.

Thanks for the history lesson. I'm a pretty firmly blue voter and it doesn't feel like the city of my youth. Are those people still here? Yeah, but there's fewer of them. The demographics feel like they've shifted and if it was still the place you described I would've stayed in Columbus. 

 

So I'll repeat myself - it's gotten sneaky cool in the last 5-10 years and if I didn't live here I wouldn't believe it myself. 

[Gothamite]

9 hours ago, throwuascenario said:

The team's original identity didn't include any references to Native Americans. In this article (https://www.ibj.com/articles/indianapolis-indians-baseball-team-considering-name-change), it states that "The Triple-A franchise has been called the Indians since its founding in 1902, as a derivation from the state’s name." The current logo set is garbage and can be thrown out. The name though was at least originally in reference to the city/state.

Even so, they’ve been using Native iconography for over a century.  Can’t disassociate them now. 

[andrewharrington]

10 hours ago, Sec19Row53 said:

If anyone has fact rather than speculation about Spiders and any intellectual property issues, please point me in that direction. 

 

Yes, I'm being the south end of a northbound horse. Unless this actually exists, we are well on the way to falsely remembering that it exists.

 

EDIT

 

This link even indicates that someone squatted on Guardians last year. I'm not saying this is a squatter issue - I'm looking for actual evidence that there were legal issues regarding Spiders, since that is what a few people have referenced. 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/sports/baseball/cleveland-spiders-trademark.html

I mean, the wording makes it sound like they were just looking for an excuse to not be the Spiders, but here it is:

 

“But a key factor was the University of Richmond has the Spiders nickname. That created branding issues. It could be expensive.”

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, Sport said:

Thanks for the history lesson. I'm a pretty firmly blue voter and it doesn't feel like the city of my youth. Are those people still here? Yeah, but there's fewer of them. The demographics feel like they've shifted and if it was still the place you described I would've stayed in Columbus.

 

I feel like suburban Cincinnati must still be very conservative in a way that, say, suburban Chicago no longer is.

[chakfu]

1 hour ago, Gothamite said:

Even so, they’ve been using Native iconography for over a century.  Can’t disassociate them now. 

 

This is literally the same as saying LA Angels aren't named after seraphim.

 

[Insert Phillies / fillys joke]

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

On 7/23/2021 at 5:26 PM, mcj882000 said:

Funny, speaking as one of the "overzealous social justice wokescolds" some of y'all are talking about, I really like it.

 

I, too, am an unapologetic social justice warrior, and I really like this identity. It made a strong first impression; and the more I look at it, the more I appreciate it.

 

In my opinion, the logos — including the G — are excellent. And the wordmark is gorgeous. I generally disapprove of custom number fonts, but this one looks very good. A win all around.

 

Also, I don't think the team should have changed colours. Someone else mentioned that the time to do that would have been upon the move to the new stadium. But the name change requires the retention of colours for continuity.

 

Just like the change of the Aunt Jemima brand to Pearl Milling Company, this change to Cleveland Guardians strikes exactly the right note, being dignified and having the feel of something that could have existed for a long time.

[Sec19Row53]

1 hour ago, andrewharrington said:

I mean, the wording makes it sound like they were just looking for an excuse to not be the Spiders, but here it is:

 

“But a key factor was the University of Richmond has the Spiders nickname. That created branding issues. It could be expensive.”

Thanks, Andrew!

[Marlins93]

I believe that's the same article that mentions them needing to clear the name Guardians with Marvel, but it doesn't really go into details about what that actually entailed.

[SFGiants58]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

 

I feel like suburban Cincinnati must still be very conservative in a way that, say, suburban Chicago no longer is.

I’m curious, what’s the Kentuck/Ohio breakdown for Cincinnati suburbs? I know the airport is in Kentucky.

[SFGiants58]

2 hours ago, Gothamite said:

Even so, they’ve been using Native iconography for over a century.  Can’t disassociate them now. 

Arrows is right there and it might have been good to adopt it after the expansion bid tanked. Not with those logos, of course. They were horrendous.

[Sport]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

 

I feel like suburban Cincinnati must still be very conservative in a way that, say, suburban Chicago no longer is.

Probably, but I drive through my mother-in-law’s affluent neighborhood and there’s a lot of pleasantly surprising signage in people’s yards. I think the west side is where you’ll still find most of the old school Cincinnati folks and that might as well be Mars to me. I don’t need or want to go over there. 

 

9 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

I’m curious, what’s the Kentuck/Ohio breakdown for Cincinnati suburbs? I know the airport is in Kentucky.

Draw a circle around a city’s center and imagine there’s suburbs all around it. In Cincinnati metro area 25/30% of those suburbs are in another state. 

[FiddySicks]

34 minutes ago, Marlins93 said:

I believe that's the same article that mentions them needing to clear the name Guardians with Marvel, but it doesn't really go into details about what that actually entailed.

I think that’s by design. It feels like they really didn’t want Spiders (despite the popularity), did a quick Google search to see if there were any potential roadblocks, and just used the very first thing that popped up (U of Richmond, in this case) as their excuse to not look into it any further. I’m disappointed by that, but can’t really blame them. I’ve seen that kind of stuff happen in branding meetings before. Why travel down a road you’re not really interested in going down anyway? It’s just an obvious waste of everyone’s time and even dangling it a tiny little bit was going to annoy people who wanted it even more. 

[SFGiants58]

23 minutes ago, Sport said:

Draw a circle around a city’s center and imagine there’s suburbs all around it. In Cincinnati metro area 25/30% of those suburbs are in another state. 

Ah, thanks. My dad is from a Louisville suburb that’s in Indiana, so out-of-state suburbs are a fun little topic for me.

[Lucas718]

2 hours ago, andrewharrington said:

I mean, the wording makes it sound like they were just looking for an excuse to not be the Spiders, but here it is:

 

“But a key factor was the University of Richmond has the Spiders nickname. That created branding issues. It could be expensive.”

 

And yet the Detroit Tigers and the 37 or so NCAA teams that also call themselves Tigers can peacefully coexist.   

[sky1324]

1 minute ago, Lucas718 said:

 

And yet the Detroit Tigers and the 37 or so NCAA teams that also call themselves Tigers can peacefully coexist.   

To be fair, the Tigers became the Tigers in 1901 - way before the modern age of trademarks, copyrights, and doing everything you can to squeeze as much profit out of a brand as you can. Creating a brand nowadays is far more difficult than back then.

[Marlins93]

32 minutes ago, FiddySicks said:

I think that’s by design. It feels like they really didn’t want Spiders (despite the popularity), did a quick Google search to see if there were any potential roadblocks, and just used the very first thing that popped up (U of Richmond, in this case) as their excuse to not look into it any further. I’m disappointed by that, but can’t really blame them. I’ve seen that kind of stuff happen in branding meetings before. Why travel down a road you’re not really interested in going down anyway? It’s just an obvious waste of everyone’s time and even dangling it a tiny little bit was going to annoy people who wanted it even more. 

 

I was referring more to them apparently having to get clearance from Marvel. In that case they actually wanted to use that name and I was curious about what the trademark status actually protected. As someone else mentioned, the possibility of the Guardians of the Galaxy outright preventing Cleveland from using that name sounds as preposterous as Spider-Man doing the same. The University of Richmond roadblock I can understand somewhat.

 

I wonder if the Marvel conversations were more about social media accounts than trademarks. I wish the article had explained more fully.

[GhostOfNormMacdonald]

29 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

Ah, thanks. My dad is from a Louisville suburb that’s in Indiana, so out-of-state suburbs are a fun little topic for me.

They are fun aren't they? The Twin Cities metro is close enough to the Wisconsin border that 100,000+ Wisconsinites live in its suburbs.

[FiddySicks]

I think Portland, Oregon is like that too. One of their biggest suburbs is in Southern Washington. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

13 minutes ago, FiddySicks said:

I think Portland, Oregon is like that too. One of their biggest suburbs is in Southern Washington. 

 

Absolutely. People live in Vancouver, WA and pay no Washington state income tax, and then often drive and do their shopping in Portland, where there's no state sales tax. Pretty nice grift they got going on there.

 

Lots of Philly/New Jersey is like that too, right?

[-Akronite-]

14 hours ago, throwuascenario said:

The team's original identity didn't include any references to Native Americans. In this article (https://www.ibj.com/articles/indianapolis-indians-baseball-team-considering-name-change), it states that "The Triple-A franchise has been called the Indians since its founding in 1902, as a derivation from the state’s name." The current logo set is garbage and can be thrown out. The name though was at least originally in reference to the city/state.

 

Indiana is itself a reference to Native Americans. If the state name derives from Indians it's hard to say the Indiana Indians isn't inherently a reference to... Indians. People are free to feel however they want about the name, just hard to separate the two.