Indianapolis Indians

45

NOTE: This review incorporates text from the previous review for the Indianapolis Indians, which was posted 2011 April 9.

It's not hard to see why a team in Indianapolis might call itself the Indians. Indian is just the beginning of Indianapolis, after all. I'm glad that approach to naming teams hasn't spread very far. It could lead to come unfortunate names. Boston Bosses wouldn't be so bad. San Diego Sands isn't exactly intimidating, but at least it's relevant to the area. But I'm glad we don't live in a world where we have teams like the Kansas City Cans and the Baltimore Balls. And can you imagine a city like Philadelphia using that approach? That would be absolutely ridiculous. I can't imagine a worse name than if Philadelphia did something like this. Can you?

The Indianapolis Indians have a lot in common with the Spokane Indians, who play in the Northwest League. Both teams have been using the Indians name since the earliest days of the Twentieth Century (1902 in Indianapolis, 1903 in Spokane), before the major league team in Cleveland started using it. Both teams have partnered with Native nations in the general vicinity in order to make continued use of the name less problematic: The Spokane Indians with the Spokane Nation, and the Indianapolis Indians with the Miami Nation of Indians of Indiana. Both teams used to have logos featuring stereotypically-depicted Native Americans playing baseball and have moved away from that in recent decades. And now that the Indianapolis Indians have debuted this new logo, both teams have a logo which basically a letter in a circle with a single piece of Native American imagery. For the Spokane Indians, the one piece of Native imagery is the pair of feathers in the outer circle of the logo. For the Indianapolis Indians, it's the row of diamonds surrounding the logo, which are a reference to the ribbon work common among nations across the Midwest. Aside from that we get a blackletter I inside a diamond inside a circle, with the team name and year of founding around the circle.

You might say that's pretty generic. And it is. But given how controversial the name is these days, it's hard to blame them for going this route. In fact, all things considered it's probably the safest move that doesn't involve changing the name. I'm a little surprised the team didn't actually do that, seeing as how they were rebranding anyway and the MLB team in Cleveland getting rid of the same name creates a certain momentum in that direction. Maybe this team just likes riffing off the beginning of the city name. Okay, fine. Just don't give the major league team in Philly any ideas.

Final Score: 45 points.
Penalties: Alliteration (egregious), 11pts; Diamond, 16 pt; Letter, 24 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -6 pts.