CLEVELAND — Many people, especially Cleveland baseball fans, are evaluating the news of the team's name change and how it will affect the future.

But Ricardo Rodriguez, the museum director at the Baseball Heritage Museum in Cleveland, is taking a look at the team's past.

What You Need To Know

  • At the end of this year's major league baseball season, the Cleveland Indians will officially be known as the Cleveland Guardians

  • Although the team's name hasn’t changed since 1915, the organization isn’t new to name changes. According to the Baseball Heritage Museum, the Cleveland baseball team has had four names

  • The Baseball Heritage Museum's mission is to celebrate, exhibit and preserve Cleveland’s baseball history

He said it may surprise some people to know that the name change from the Indians to the Guardians, which is set to take place at the end of the team's 2021 season, isn’t the first name change the team has experienced. 

"The Indians, they had three other names: the Cleveland Blues, the Cleveland Spiders, the Cleveland Naps and then finally the Indians,” Rodriguez said.

Each name since the team's inception in 1901 has a story behind it. 

“They were named the Naps for Larry Lajoie . . . Napoleon was his middle name, so that's where Naps came from and they named it after the player-coach," Rodriguez said. "Blues was their first name when they were just a primordial baseball club. The story goes that somebody said that there were a bunch of lanky, tall, lanky baseball players on the field and they look like a bunch of spiders . . . so that's how that nickname came about."

But this is the first name change Rodriguez, who grew up watching and cheering on the team, has been around for. The team has been known as the Indians for over 100 years. 

“Louis Sockalexis, reportedly the first Native American to play baseball, reports have it that, that is why they were called the Indians, he said. "Other reports state that it was more of a derogatory term."

Rodriguez said the team, like many other things, evolves with the times and its community.

He said he looks forward to the museum continuing to help tell the history of Cleveland baseball.

“We are excited to help the city tell the story of the emerging Guardians," he said. "We will immediately start gathering artifacts from the first season because history is happening every day."