Remembering, Now & Forever
This Penobscot baseball player inspired the Cleveland Indians name ‘for all the wrong reasons’ by Emily BurnhamDecember 18, 2020 Bangor Daily News Louis Sockalexis, in an undated photo taken during his professional baseball career between 1897 and 1907. Credit: Public domain It was a historic day in 1897 when Louis Sockalexis, a 26-year-old member of the Penobscot tribe, became the first Native American Major League Baseball player, taking the field for … [Read more...]
Cleveland Indians to drop controversial nickname affiliated with player from Maine’s Penobscot Nation by Larry Mahoney, Bangor Daily News December 15, 2020 Ed Rice’s phone was ringing off the hook on Monday. People wanted to talk about the news that Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians intend to abandon their longstanding name, one that is considered by many to be offensive. “I am stunned,” said an elated Rice, who has spent nearly 40 years researching and telling the … [Read more...]
He’s why Cleveland came to be called the Indians. How should they honor him? Members of one Maine tribe hope that the team’s first know Native American player, trailblazer Louis Sockalexis of the Penobscot Nation, is properly recognized. by Erik Ortiz, NBC News December 14, 2020 Erik Ortiz is a staff writer for NBC News focusing on racial injustice and social inequality. Cleveland's major-league baseball team … [Read more...]
By: Ted Berg, Writer for USA Today | February 1, 2018 11:54 am Earlier this week, after continued pressure from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, the Cleveland Indians announced they will strip the controversial Chief Wahoo logos from their on-field uniforms starting in 2019. The club will still sell some merchandise with the racist imagery, but doing so will prevent others from profiting off use of the smiling, red-faced caricature. The Cleveland club began using early version of Chief Wahoo … [Read more...]
Ed Rice Special to the Bangor Daily News Not meant to be anywhere near as darkly humorous as Boston’s celebrated “Curse of the Bambino” or the Chicago Cubs’ concerns about curses related to a billy goat or a reviled fan named Bartman, a curse from the late Native American political activist Russell Means was put on the Cleveland Indians baseball team for its inappropriate nickname and racist caricature logo/mascot, Chief Wahoo. His curse specifically directs that the team make it to the … [Read more...]
By Ed Rice, Special to the Bangor Daily News As my plane winged its way to Cleveland last week, on my way to give a library talk in praise of Maine Penobscot Indian Louis Sockalexis and against the Cleveland Indians’ continuing use of Chief Wahoo, I began imagining myself as being something like the Jimmy Stewart character in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Upon my return trip to Bangor — after thinking about a solitary walk around Progressive Field that left me infuriated by the Cleveland … [Read more...]
By Guest Columnist/cleveland.com on October 18, 2013 at 4:39 PM ORONO, MAINE -- The Cleveland Indians organization has never had any real understanding -- or appreciation -- of what it has in the historical figure of Louis Sockalexis, a man who almost certainly broke professional baseball’s color barrier, a man who was definitively the first-known American Indian to play, a man who went through the exact same experience Jackie Robinson endured 50 years after him but never gets any comparable … [Read more...]
This story was published on April 03, 2004 on Page D1 in all editions of the Bangor Daily News (Editor’s note: In this second of three columns on disrespect to Native Americans in the world of sports and, particularly, disrespect to a Maine Indian legend, Louis Sockalexis, author Ed Rice discusses how Louis Sockalexis inspired the nickname “Indians” the major league team in Cleveland uses to this day, but is in no way honored by the continuing specter of the racist caricature, Chief … [Read more...]
