Cleveland Bronchos

The Cleveland Guardians are a professional baseball team based in Cleveland, Ohio. They are in the Central Division of Major League Baseball's American League. Since 1994, they have played in Progressive Field. The Cleveland team originated in 1900 as the Lake Shores, when the American League (AL) was officially a minor league. One of the AL's eight charter franchises, the major league incarnation of the club was founded in Cleveland in 1901.

1894–1946: Beginning to middle

The Grand Rapids Rustlers were founded in Michigan in 1894 and were in the Western League. In 1900 the team moved to Cleveland and was called the Cleveland Lake Shores. Around the same time Ban Johnson changed the name of his minor league Western League to the American League. In 1900 the American League was still considered a minor league. In 1901 Cleveland franchise was called the "Bluebirds" or "Blues", when the American League broke with the National Agreement and declared itself a competing Major League. The Cleveland franchise was among its eight charter members.

The new team was owned by coal magnate Charles Somers and tailor Jack Kilfoyl. Somers, a wealthy industrialist and also co-owner of the Boston Americans, lent money to other team owners, including Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics, to keep them and the new league afloat. Players didn't think the name "Bluebirds" was suitable for a baseball team. Writers frequently shortened it to "Blues" due to the players' all-blue uniforms, but the players didn't like this name either. The players themselves tried to change the name to "Bronchos" in , but it never really caught on.

The Bluebirds suffered from financial problems in their first two seasons. This led Somers to seriously consider moving to either Pittsburgh or Cincinnati. Relief came in 1902 as a result of the conflict between the National and American Leagues. In 1901, Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie, the Philadelphia Phillies' star second baseman, jumped to the A's after his contract was capped at $2,400 per year—one of the highest-profile players to jump to the upstart AL. The Phillies subsequently filed an injunction to force Lajoie's return, which was granted by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The injunction appeared to doom any hopes of an early settlement between the warring leagues. However, a lawyer discovered that the injunction was only enforceable in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Mack, partly to thank Somers for his past financial support, agreed to trade Lajoie to the then-moribund Blues, who offered $25,000 salary over three years. Due to the injunction, however, Lajoie had to sit out any games played against the A's in Philadelphia. Lajoie arrived in Cleveland on June 4 and was an immediate hit, drawing 10,000 fans to League Park. Soon afterward, he was named team captain, and the team was called the "Naps" after a newspaper conducted a write-in contest.

Lajoie was named manager in , and the team's fortunes improved somewhat. They finished half a game short of the pennant in 1908. However, the success did not last and Lajoie resigned during the 1909 season as manager but remained on as a player.

After that, the team began to unravel, leading Kilfoyl to sell his share of the team to Somers. Cy Young, who returned to Cleveland in 1909, was ineffective for most of his three remaining years and Addie Joss died from tubercular meningitis prior to the season.

Despite a strong lineup anchored by the potent Lajoie and Shoeless Joe Jackson, poor pitching kept the team below third place for most of the next decade. One reporter referred to the team as the Napkins, "because they fold up so easily". The team hit bottom in 1914 and 1915, finishing in the cellar both years.

1915 brought significant changes to the team. Lajoie, nearly 40 years old, was no longer a top hitter in the league, batting only .258 in 1914. With Lajoie engaged in a feud with manager Joe Birmingham, the team sold Lajoie back to the A's.

With Lajoie gone, the club needed a new name. Somers asked the local baseball writers to come up with a new name, and based on their input, the team was renamed the Cleveland Indians. It is claimed that the nickname "Indians" references Cleveland Spiders baseball club during the time when Louis Sockalexis, a Native American, had played in Cleveland (1897–99); however this is contested by sportswriter Joe Posnanski who argues "Why exactly would people in Cleveland — this in a time when Native Americans were generally viewed as subhuman in America — name their team after a relatively minor and certainly troubled outfielder?" Sockalexis played only 96 games over three seasons, compiling just 367 at bats in his career. Sockalexis also "had to deal with horrendous racism, terrible taunts, whoops from the crowd, and so on," according to Posnanski. According to history professor Jonathan Zimmerman, the franchise was named the Indians by local baseball writers not to honor Sockalexis, but as a reference to the "fun" that he would inspire in crowds and the fact that journalists jokingly referred to the club as the "Cleveland Indians," even though it was officially named the Spiders. "In place of the Naps, we'll have the Indians, on the warpath all the time, and eager for scalps to dangle at their belts," wrote an article in the ''Cleveland Leader'' of January 17, 1915.

At the same time as the team was renamed, Somers' business ventures began to fail, leaving him deeply in debt. With the Indians playing poorly, attendance and revenue suffered. Somers decided to trade Jackson midway through the 1915 season for two players and $31,500, one of the largest sums paid for a player at the time.

1916 to 1926: Ownership Change and First World Series Title

By , Somers was at the end of his tether, and sold the team to a syndicate headed by Chicago railroad contractor James C. "Jack" Dunn. Manager Lee Fohl, who had taken over in early 1915, acquired two minor league pitchers, Stan Coveleski and Jim Bagby and traded for center fielder Tris Speaker, who was engaged in a salary dispute with the Red Sox. All three would ultimately become key players in bringing a championship to Cleveland.

Speaker took over the reins as player-manager in , and would lead the team to a championship in 1920. On August 16, the Indians were playing the Yankees at the Polo Grounds in New York. Shortstop Ray Chapman, who often crowded the plate, was batting against Carl Mays, who had an unusual underhand delivery. It was also late in the afternoon and the infield would have been in shadow with the center field area (the batters' background) bathed in sunlight. As well, at the time, "part of every pitcher's job was to dirty up a new ball the moment it was thrown onto the field. By turns, they smeared it with dirt, licorice, tobacco juice; it was deliberately scuffed, sandpapered, scarred, cut, even spiked. The result was a misshapen, earth-colored ball that traveled through the air erratically, tended to soften in the later innings, and as it came over the plate, was very hard to see."

In any case, Chapman did not move reflexively when Mays' pitch came his way. The pitch hit Chapman in the head, fracturing his skull. Chapman died the next day, becoming the only player to sustain a fatal injury from a pitched ball. The Indians, who at the time were locked in a tight three-way pennant race with the Yankees and White Sox, were not slowed down by the death of their teammate. Rookie Joe Sewell hit .329 after replacing Chapman in the lineup.

In September 1920, the Black Sox Scandal came to a boil. With just a few games left in the season, and Cleveland and Chicago neck-and-neck for first place at 94–54 and 95–56 respectively, the Chicago owner suspended eight players. The White Sox lost 2 of 3 in their final series, while Cleveland won 4 and lost 2 in their final two series. Cleveland finished 2 games ahead of Chicago and 3 games ahead of the Yankees to win its first pennant, led by Speaker's .388 hitting, Jim Bagby's 30 victories, and solid performances from Steve O'Neill and Stan Coveleski. Cleveland went on to defeat the Brooklyn Robins 5–2 in the World Series for their first title, winning four games in a row after the Robins took a 2–1 Series lead. The Series included three memorable "firsts", all of them in Game 5 at Cleveland, and all by the home team. In the first inning, right fielder Elmer Smith hit the first Series grand slam. In the fourth inning, Jim Bagby hit the first Series home run by a pitcher. And in the top of the fifth inning, second baseman Bill Wambsganss executed the first (and only, so far) unassisted triple play in World Series history, in fact the only Series triple play of any kind.

The team would not reach the heights of 1920 again for 28 years. Speaker and Coveleski were aging and the Yankees were rising with a new weapon: Babe Ruth and the home run. They managed two second-place finishes but spent much of the decade in the cellar. In winter of 1922, Dunn contracted influenza, which lingered for months, and eventually died at his home in Chicago on June 9. Accordingly, control of the team passed to his widow, Edith Dunn, and his estate; making Mrs. Dunn among the first women to own a major league baseball team.
However, Mrs. Dunn had no interest in running the team, leaving the decision-making to Ernest Barnard, who served as general manager since 1903.

1927 to 1946: The Bradley Years to WWII

In 1927, Edith, by then known as Mrs. George Pross, sold the team to a syndicate headed by Alva Bradley for $1 million. The Bradley group brought stability to a team that had a caretaker (Barnard) running it for five years. Bradley was a well-established businessman from a prominent Cleveland family, was president of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, the chairman of the Cleveland Builders Supply Company, and an avid baseball fan. Other members of the ownership group included his brother, Charles Bradley, with whom he invested $175,000, banker John Sherwin Sr. ($300,000), Percy Morgan ($200,000), former Cleveland mayor and U.S. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker ($25,000), along with this law partner attorney Joseph C. Hostetler ($25,000; and would later be legal counsel for the American League), and the railroad magnates Van Sweringen brothers ($250,000). While Bradley was the team's president, he was not the majority shareholder.

The Indians were a middling team by the 1930s, finishing third or fourth most years. However, ownership began to wobble during the Great Depression. The Van Swearingens, or the "Vans" as they were commonly known, ran into incredible financial difficulty and were forced to liquidate assets to cover loans. In 1932, the Vans sold their original $250,000 investment (which was 25% of the team) for $125,000 to Alva Bradley, E.G. Crawford, I.F. Freiberger, and W.G. Bernet. Morgan also sold his original $200,000 investment (which was 20% of the team) to George Martin and George Tomlinson for an undisclosed sum. The Vans died essentially penniless in 1934 and 1936. brought Cleveland a 17-year-old pitcher, Bob Feller, who came from Van Meter, Iowa, with a powerful fastball. That season, Feller set a record with 17 strikeouts in a single game and went on to lead the league in strikeouts from 1938 to 1941. After the 1937 season, Secretary Baker also died. Indians catchers Hank Helf and Frank Pytlak set the "all-time altitude mark" on August 20, 1938, by catching baseballs dropped from the Terminal Tower.

By , Feller, along with Ken Keltner, Mel Harder and Lou Boudreau led the Indians to within one game of the pennant. However, the team was wracked with dissension, with some players going so far as to request that Bradley fire manager Ossie Vitt. Reporters lampooned them as the Cleveland Crybabies. Feller, who had pitched a no-hitter to open the season and won 27 games, lost the final game of the season to unknown pitcher Floyd Giebell of the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers won the pennant and Giebell never won another major league game.

Cleveland entered 1941 with a young team and a new manager; Roger Peckinpaugh had replaced the despised Vitt; but the team regressed, finishing in fourth. Cleveland would soon be depleted of two stars. Hal Trosky retired in 1941 due to migraine headaches and Bob Feller enlisted in the U.S. Navy two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Starting third baseman Ken Keltner and outfielder Ray Mack were both drafted in 1945 taking two more starters out of the lineup.

1947–1959: The Post-War Powerhouse

In Bill Veeck formed an investment group that purchased the Cleveland Indians from Bradley's group for a reported $1.6 million. The group had more than a dozen investors, most notably celebrity Bob Hope, who grew up in Cleveland, and former Tigers slugger, Hank Greenberg. He was the last owner to purchase a baseball franchise without an independent fortune, and is responsible for many innovations and contributions to baseball.

A former owner of a minor league franchise in Milwaukee, Veeck brought a gift for promotion to Cleveland. At one point, Veeck hired rubber-faced Max Patkin, the "Clown Prince of Baseball," as a coach. Patkin's appearance in the coaching box was the sort of promotional stunt that delighted fans but infuriated the American League front office. Under Veeck's leadership, one of Cleveland's most significant achievements was breaking the color barrier in the American League by signing Larry Doby, formerly a player for the Negro league's Newark Eagles in , eleven weeks after Jackie Robinson signed with the Dodgers. Similar to Robinson, Doby battled racism on and off the field but posted a .301 batting average in 1948, his first full season. A power-hitting center fielder, Doby led the American League twice in homers and was eventually elected to th
Hall of Fame

Recognizing that he had acquired a solid team, Veeck soon abandoned the aging, small and lightless League Park to take up full-time residence in massive Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Prior to 1947 the Indians played most of their games at League Park, and occasionally played weekend games at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. League Park was demolished in 1951, although a portion of the original ticket booth remains.

Making the most of the cavernous stadium, Veeck had a portable center field fence installed, which he could move in or out depending on how the distance favored the Indians against their opponents in a given series. The fence moved as much as between series opponents. Following the 1947 season, the American League countered with a rule change that fixed the distance of an outfield wall for the duration of a season. The massive stadium did, however, permit the Indians to set the then record for the largest crowd to see a Major League baseball game. On October 10, 1948, Game 5 of the World Series against the Boston Braves drew over 84,000. The record stood until the Los Angeles Dodgers drew a crowd in excess of 92,500 to watch Game 5 of the 1959 World Series at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum against the Chicago White Sox.

In , needing pitching for the stretch run of the pennant race, Veeck turned to the Negro leagues again and signed pitching great Satchel Paige amid much controversy. Barred from Major League Baseball during his prime, Veeck's signing of the aging star in 1948 was viewed by many as another publicity stunt. At an official age of 42, Paige became the oldest rookie in Major League baseball history and the first black pitcher. Paige ended the year with a 6–1 record with a 2.48 ERA, 45 strikeouts and two shutouts.

Veterans Boudreau, Keltner, and Joe Gordon had career offensive seasons, while newcomers Larry Doby and Gene Bearden also had standout seasons. The team went down to the wire with the Boston Red Sox, winning a one-game playoff, the first in American League history, to go to the World Series. In the series, the Indians defeated the Boston Braves four games to two for their first championship in 28 years. Boudreau won the American League MVP Award. Greenberg also consolidated ownership group during 1948, buying 67% from the syndicate for an undisclosed sum.

The following year, the Indians would appear in a film the following year titled '' The Kid From Cleveland'', in which Veeck had an interest. The film portrayed the team helping out a "troubled teenaged fan" and featured many members of the Indians organization. However, filming during the season cost the players valuable rest days leading to fatigue towards the end of the season. That season, Cleveland again contended before falling to third place. On September 23, 1949, Bill Veeck and the Indians buried their 1948 pennant in center field the day after they were mathematically eliminated from the pennant race.

Later in 1949, Veeck's first wife (who was entitled to half of Veeck's share of the team) divorced him. With most of his money tied up in the Indians, Veeck was forced to sell the team to a syndicate headed by insurance magnate Ellis Ryan for $2.5 million. In 1950, Hank Greenberg became general manager. Ryan was forced out in in favor of Myron "Mike" Wilson. Despite this turnover in the ownership, a powerhouse team composed of Feller, Doby, Minnie Miñoso, Luke Easter, Bobby Ávila, Al Rosen, Early Wynn, Bob Lemon, and Mike Garcia continued to contend through the early 1950s. However, Cleveland only won a single pennant in the decade, finishing second to the New York Yankees five times.

The winningest season in franchise history came in , when the Indians finished the season with a record of 111–43 (.721). That mark set an American League record for wins which stood for 44 years until the Yankees won 114 games in 1998 (a 162-game regular season). The Indians 1954 winning percentage of .721 is still an American League record. The Indians returned to the World Series to face the New York Giants. The team could not bring home the title, however, ultimately being upset by the Giants in a sweep. The series was notable for Willie Mays' over-the-shoulder catch off the bat of Vic Wertz in Game 1.

In , Mike Wilson sold the team for $3.96 million to a three-man group led by William Daley, oil tycoon Ignatius Aloysius "Nashe" O’Shaughnessy, and the return of Hank Greenberg. However, despite Daley taking control of the Indians and became chairman of the board, Wilson stayed on as the team's president. However, general manager Hank Greenberg, who was also owned 19% of the team, was unceremoniously fired in October 1957 (Greenberg abstained from the vote, and would soon sell his stake) after it was revealed that he was the mastermind behind a potential move of the club to Minneapolis.

Frank Lane becomes general manager

The Indians hired general manager Frank Lane

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