Chicago White Sox: What could Cleveland change their name to?

The Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians are currently competing for first place in the American League Central. If the Indians do manage to overtake the White Sox and win the division, it will be their last time doing so under their current name which they will be dropping after this year according to the New York Times.

What could Chicago White Sox rival Cleveland Indians change their name to?

2021 will be the last season that the Cleveland baseball team will be known as the “Indians”, a nickname they’ve had for over 100 years. They were originally founded in 1901 as the Cleveland Bluebirds and then were later named the Cleveland “Naps” after player Nap Lajoie before becoming the Cleveland Indians.

Regardless of what you may think about the decision, I’d argue that “Cleveland Indians” was a horrible name for a baseball team. It doesn’t even sound that good. Still, as a fan of baseball, I’d think what would be good for the sport would be to have the best name possible for the team.

Some suggest Cleveland not have a name at all like the NFL’s Washington Football Team. This is a really dumb idea. “Baseball Team”? I think that would be worse than the old name and we can do better than that. Many fans suggest returning to the Cleveland “Naps” or the Cleveland “Spiders” which was the name of the Cleveland baseball team when they were a National League franchise. Both of these names would be better than the Indians.

I think the nickname that makes the most sense is “Blue Sox”. This would give the American League three teams named after Sox that are Red, White, and Blue. How patriotic. ESPN announcers and commentators would no longer be able to reference the Red Sox as “the Sox” because they’d be too many teams being ignored.

The name “Blue Sox” is similar to Cleveland’s original name “Cleveland Bluebirds/Blues”, and contains a familiarity that you would expect from an original American League franchise. They wouldn’t even need to change the color scheme as they already have blue on some of their jerseys.

Of course, they don’t actually wear blue socks but the White Sox don’t actually wear white socks either which is something I’ve never understood. They have white on their whole uniform except where you would most expect it.

A problem with the White Sox is that they don’t have a “true” rival. They have pretty good rivalries with the Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers but there’s no team this is their rival in the same way as Cubs-Cardinals or Yankees-Red Sox.

Renaming the Indians the “Blue Sox” would finally give the White Sox an intense rivalry as having the teams being called the Blue Sox and White Sox could bring additional intensity to their matchups, especially if they were competing for first place as they are now.