Louis Sockalexis and the Cleveland Indians

[DOUGHBOYS]

Have you ever heard of Louis Sockalexis?
Most folks haven't.
Louis Sockalexis is responsible (in part) for the naming of a Major League baseball team.
A team that politically correct folks abhor.
The Cleveland Indians.
Here's the story.

Louis Sockalexis was a full blooded indian. In the early 1880's, it was not good to be an indian. The slaughter of Custer and his seventh cavalry were still fresh in most white men's minds. Most indians were on reservtions. The indians with education, integrating into the white man's world when allowed.
Louis Sockalexis was a boy going to an indian school.An indian school on the Penobscot reservation in Bangor, Maine. The overseers of the school were mostly priests, nuns, and volunteers.

Like Babe Ruth, a few years later, a priest took an interest in Louis athletic abilities. Athletically, he could run faster, throw farther, and jump higher than other kids even four or five years his senior. The priest convinced the boy to work at studying so that he could get an athletic scholarship at a College.
Sockalexis took the priest words to heart, he studied while honing his athletic skills.
He would go to St Marys College in Van Buren, Maine. Then recruited to Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
There, he was recognized as one of the best baseball players in the country.
He hit .436 his first year.
.444, his second.
He also smashed a record for an amateur National baseball throw.
Yes, they had baseball throw competitions in those days.
Sockalexis threw the baseball 393 feet, eight inches.

The baseball coach at Holy Cross got a job at Notre Dame and Sockalexis followed.
Sockalexis impressed everybody there during practices. Including professional teams.
He would never play a game for Notre Dame.
He was expelled from the school when he and a drinking buddy busted up a brothel run by a girl named 'Popcorn Jennie'.
There are three stories in what happened that night.
Nobody is for sure in which is the right one.
One story is that it was a party that got out of control.
Another is that he and his friend were miffed in that Popcorn Jennie would not 'serve' Indians.
A third, is that the Cleveland Indians Manager, Patsy Tebeau, wanted Sockalexis on his team now rather than later.
You see, Sox had already signed a committment contract to play with Cleveland after his Notre Dame years were through.
So, the third story is that Tebeau led Sockalexis to the brothel, got him drunk, and started the fights and mess that would get Sox thrown out of school.
Any which way, Sox was on his way to Cleveland to play ball.

The signing of Louis Sockalexis was a big deal to Cleveland Spiders fans. There just were not many indians integrated into socity, let alone playing professional baseball.
The signing was a bonanza for the Spiders revenues. Many fans coming just to see a 'real live indian'.
Most were there to make fun of Sockalexis.
They shouted indian war whoops.
They yelled, "Wouldn't you be more comfortable with a tomahawk than a bat!"
But like most fans, they were soon won over by Sox talent.
The bashers were fewer and fewer, outnumbered by the fans who loved watching him play.
The indian chants became good natured, not derisive.
This Cleveland indian had found a home.

Back in the day, nicknames for teams were not taken as seriously as now.
They could change on a dime.
The Spiders were 'the Clevelands' before.
Re-named the Spiders because their players were thought to be long and skinny and showing up in the wrong places.
Yes, back then, nicknames could be mean.
With Sockalexis signed, sportswriters referred to the team as the Cleveland Indians.
It was not meant to be nice.
Out of town sportswriters delighted in making light of the signing.
The negative conotation disappeared though as folks started watching Sox perform.
By the fourth of July of his rookie year, Sox was third in the league in batting average and among leaders in most other categories.
John McGraw, the Hall of Fame Manager who was short with compliments thought that Sox was the best player he had ever seen.

So why have we never heard of Louis Sockalexis?
It's because those fourth of July stats in his rookie year would be the only meaningful stats he would have as a professional player.
And it would be another brothel that would do him in.
On the fourth of July in 1897, Sox went brothel hopping.
Figurative and literal.
He 'attended' a couple of brothels and ended his night by jumping or falling from a second story window of one of them.
His ankle was injured and it would never heal properly.
Sockalexis tried to play the next few seasons, but he was never the same.
During those following seasons, he would show up to games drunk or hung over.
A stereotype.
Cleveland woud fine him and try helping him become the player he once was, but it was no use.
He was released.
He would fill the rest of his life performing menial tasks and odd jobs.
At the young age of 42, Louis Sockalexis died of a heart attack.
The press clippings from his glory days, in his pocket.

The year that Louis was released, Cleveland changed their name back to the Spiders.
That team would be the worst team in the short history of baseball.
The team folded.
Just two years later, Ban Johnson would start the American league and have Cleveland as a franchise.
They were called....The Cleveland Blues.
The name only lasted a year.
In 1902, they signed Napolean Lajoie and they were called 'The Cleveland Naps'.
They were called 'The Naps' till Lajoie left them in 1915.
During this time, it was convenient for fans and sportswriters to accuse Cleveland of 'Napping' when going into slumps.
It didn't set right with management and a new name was to be found.
A committee was formed of sportswriters and locals to come up with a new name.
'Terriors', 'Climbers', and 'Erie's' were all passed on.
There were two theories in what influenced the decision.
One is that there were a few old timers who remembered Louis Sockalexis.
His passing, less than two years before.
Another, was that the Boston 'Braves' had just had a miracle run of winning 60 of their last 76 games and had gone from last to first in a pennant race and then the World Series.
Or maybe, it was a little of both.

Here is the paragraph in the 'Cleveland Plains Dealer' that announces the new Cleveland nickname.

''The Clevelands of 1915 will be the 'Indians'.
There will be no real indians on the roster, but the name will recall fine traditions. It is looking backward to a time when Cleveland had one of the finest teams in the United States. It also serves to revive the memory of a single great player who has been gathered to his fathers in the happy hunting grounds of the Abenakis."

Politically correct folks take for granted that nicknames make light of their subject.
Nothing could be farther from the truth in the case of the Cleveland Indians.

[Bronx Yankees]

Dan: Interesting story, thanks for sharing it. Tough to see stuff like this happening today in our PC world.

Mike