Cleveland Baseball Team to Drop ‘Indians’ Name, NYT Reports

(Bloomberg) -- Cleveland’s baseball team plans to drop the word “Indians” from its name, the New York Times reports, citing three people familiar with the decision.

The team doesn’t have a plan for its new name yet, and could use the Indians name for the 2021 season before shifting away from it, one of the people said. Another option could be to proceed without a replacement name and come up with one in the future, two of the people said. The plans could be announced as soon as this week, according to the report.

The Cleveland team, which has moved away from its cartoonish tribal chief logo and had earlier announced plans to reconsider its moniker, didn’t immediately comment to the Times.

In the months since George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, a global reckoning on race and equality has prompted several name and branding changes to drop racist slurs and imagery. The Washington Football Team dropped the word “Redskins” earlier this year. Several other professional U.S. sports teams with tribal names and imagery, including the Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Chiefs and Chicago Blackhawks, have said they will keep their names.

President Donald Trump, who has threatened to veto a military spending priorities bill in part over the issue of renaming military installations currently titled after Confederates, criticized the reported move as “cancel culture at work.”

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