On January 18, 1915, a Plain Dealer article titled “Looking Backward,” confirms that “many years ago there was an Indian named Sockalexis who was the star player … the team will be named ‘Indians’ to honor him.” But many current writers and historians call foul. Ellen J. Staurowsky first suggested in a landmark 1998 article that the new name may have been piggybacking on the popularity of the 1914 Boston Braves, who miraculously rose from worst to first in mid-season. Craig Calcaterra of NBC’s Hardball Talk agrees, calling the Sockalexis story “bogus.” Keith Olbermann just calls it “lies.” The Braves angle passes the common-sense test: Borrowing the ideas of a successful team is a tradition as old as the game itself. Picking “Indians” to evoke “Braves” seems very plausible, especially when you consider baseball’s love of superstition. What could be better karma than adopting a nickname inspired by the team that just won it all?
Still, other accounts support the idea that the name actually is meant to honor Sockalexis, who was, from May to July 1897, a very good baseball player. In fact, Sockalexis was so beloved—he was hitting over .370 that spring—that the sportswriters wrote poems to him in the newspaper. In the Plain Dealer:
This is bounding Sockalexis Fielder of the mighty Clevelands All the crowd cries: “Sockalexis, Sockalexis, Sockalexis!” When he circles like the eagle Round the bases, or serenely Slides upon his solferine Pie and doughnut padded stomach, Wiping all the glaring war paint Off his nasal in a jiffy.
There is an old tone at work here. The focus of the “poem” on his war paint, belly, and nose uses praise for his play as an excuse for casual racism. They didn’t even need cartoons in 1897. During Sockalexis’ magic May, the paper riffed on the infamous words of General Philip Sheridan, stating “The man who said that there are no good Indians except dead Indians … surely never saw one Louis Sockalexis.”
Turn-of-the-century sportswriters really wrote like that. Even when they clap, they get in their digs. On May 6, 1897, in a loss against Cincinnati, “the greatest portion of the glory in yesterday’s game fell to the lot of Sockalexis,” who scored a homerun and cut off a runner at the plate in “a sensational fielding play … that will not be soon forgotten.” The writer calls Sockalexis “Big-Man-Not-Afraid-of-His-Job.” Was this racism, or just the way people thought back then? Does it matter?