Zalusky: Spiders, Naps, Buckeyes - or Crybabies?

Now that the Washington football franchise is expunging its controversial sobriquet, it won't be long before Cleveland's baseball team follows suit.

Already, the ballclub has announced that the franchise nickname is under review. Last year, it took a step in that direction when Chief Wahoo went the way of Chief Illiniwek as the mascot's grinning visage disappeared from the team's uniforms.

In the meantime, suggestions for replacements are already surfacing, including one from Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown that actually makes sense, considering that

Cleveland's Larry Doby was the American League's first Black player in 1947 and the team also signed Negro League icon Satchel Paige a year later.

Brown wants the team to be called the Cleveland Buckeyes, after the city's Negro League team.

Whatever happens will not change my admittedly warped view of the Cleveland baseball club, which was shaped by successive invasions of legions of its fans into new Comiskey Park in the 1990s.

Fans of the Tribe were easily the most obnoxious of visiting rooters. Think of inviting into your home a guest who fails to remove his muddy shoes, tracks up your carpet, eats everything in your fridge, and neglects to wash his hands after using the bathroom, all the while insulting your house and praising his own.

Then you can readily understand what Sox fans endured as hordes of Cleveland partisans filled the seats formerly occupied by Sox fans disenchanted after the 1994 strike. Getting off the Red Line you could hear them trash Chicago. In their seats, they would trash the ballpark and the fans.

It didn't help that what was happening on the field was just as nauseating, with Thome, Alomar, Lofton, Vizquel and Ramirez running roughshod over our Sox. You think you can catch Cleveland? You must be crazy.

Even when one of their own, Albert Belle, changed his address to the South Side, the results proved disastrous for the Sox.

So you can imagine my glee when Cleveland failed to overtake the Sox in 2005. Cleveland fans had called the Sox "chokers" as their team inched closer to the AL Central crown. Joe Crede exposed Cleveland as the real chokers when his decisive home run capped a Sox comeback on Sept. 20 at U.S. Cellular Field.

But now I am putting aside my feelings to offer some helpful suggestions to the fans from the Rock 'n' Roll Capital of the World.

Looking back on Cleveland baseball history, there are several possible candidates, such as the name of the city's first professional team, the Forest Citys of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players.

Or the Cleveland Spiders, after the National League team led by Cy Young. Following a 20-win season, they were dropped by the National League in 1899.

The Naps, a nod to early Cleveland star Napoleon Lajoie and the name that preceded Indians, is another possibility.

And then there is my favorite, an unofficial nickname briefly foisted upon the team in 1940 - the Cleveland Crybabies.

It emerged in reaction to a clubhouse players revolt that year against Cleveland manager Ossie Vitt. Some think the protest cost Cleveland the pennant.

Among the players on the team, although not involved in the rebellion, was shortstop and future Cubs announcer and manager Lou Boudreau.

In August, Cleveland was in first place with a comfortable cushion over second-place Detroit. But some players, unhappy with Vitt, took their complaints to club president Alva Bradley and demanded Vitt's ouster.

Word of the mutiny leaked out. When Cleveland traveled to Detroit, Tigers fans, using megaphones, showered the Cleveland players with the epithet "Crybabies." Two fans went even further before one of the games in the series, jumping onto the field with 7-foot poles bedecked with baby clothes. Cleveland dropped two out of three crucial games in the series and faded in the pennant race.

It was a name that stuck in memory when sports writers compared the morale of Vitt's squad to that of the 1948 world champions managed by Boudreau, the last Cleveland ballclub to win the World Series.

Although unrelated to its previous usage, the name "Crybaby" resurfaced in connection with Cleveland in 2008, this time in another sport. It happened when the Cavaliers' LeBron James criticized the Washington Wizards for trying to hurt him during an NBA playoff series. The Wizards' Brendan Haywood responded by calling James a "crybaby."

Haywood's response even inspired a Papa John's location to distribute a shirt with James' number 23 and the word "crybaby" above it.

It is certain we will never see Cleveland officially become the Crybabies. But one can't deny that it seems to fit.

szalusky@dailyherald.com