The Cleveland Indians have confirmed that they intend to jettison their 105-year-old name, but now say they will not make the change before 2022.
On Thursday, Indians Owner Paul Dolan told the Akron Roundtable that the team may have to delay implementing its new name and graphics in 2022, instead of this year.
“The timeline remains the same,” Dolan said during the Zoom event. “Just to be clear, we said, ‘No sooner than 2022.’ Our target is still 2022, but it is a difficult process. Trying to find a name that works, that we can clear, and ultimately in a tight time frame.
“By ‘tight,’ I mean we can’t just show up in spring training (in 2022) and say, ‘Here’s the new name.’ We have to have it buttoned up long before that,” Dolan added.
“It could be sometime in the middle of this year whether we know we’ve got it down where we can do it for 2022. If not, we’d have to push it to 2023. We’re working hard to get it done by then, but there’s no certainty in that,” he said.
Last year, President Donald Trump lamented the team’s name change, calling it another example of the cancel culture.
“Oh no! What is going on? This is not good news, even for ‘Indians,'” Trump wrote on Twitter in Dec. “Cancel culture at work!”
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