Cleveland wins final home game before name change - MLB

CLEVELAND — As they’ve done in countless ninth innings over decades, fans in Progressive Field stood to cheer during the final three outs.

It was different Monday. They chanted “Let’s Go Indians!”

One last time.

Cleveland won its final home game before becoming the Guardians, beating the Kansas City Royals 8-3 to close a run that started in 1915 and will continue next season with a new look and identity.

Amed Rosario homered and Cal Quantrill (8-3) pitched six strong innings to delight a Progressive Field crowd of 13,121 that came to see their team play with Indians written across their jerseys for the final time.

“Not all of us have been here for a long time, but we all respect what the Indians have meant to Cleveland for the last forever and I think we wanted to send people off on the right note,” said Quantrill, who is 8-1 since July 1.

“We’re very happy that this is how they will get to remember the Indians.”

Rosario connected against Jackson Kowar (0-5) and finished with four hits. Bradley Zimmer homered off his brother, Kansas City reliever Kyle Zimmer, in the eighth.

Salvador Perez drove in two runs for the Royals.

The home finale was the club’s final game in Cleveland as the Indians, ending a 106-year run in a city where the name will forever be attached to those of legendary players like Bob Feller, Larry Doby and Jim Thome.

But now the Indians are a memory, just not yet faded or distant.

The team announced the name change earlier this year in the wake of a nationwide reckoning over racist names and symbols. For some, the change was overdue. Others still aren’t ready.

When “Take Me Out to The Ballgame” was played during the seventh-inning stretch, Cleveland fans shouted “root, root, root for the Indians!” as if to send a message.

Following the game, Cleveland’s players returned to the field to salute the fans.

“I thought it was a nice touch,” said acting Indians manager DeMarlo Hale. “They were outstanding in the ninth inning, that last out. Both very nice gestures.”

Cleveland won two World Series (1920 and 1948) as the Indians, and came close to winning it all in 1995, 1997 and 2016 only to twice lose in heartbreaking fashion. Now, baseball’s longest current title drought carries on under a new name.

Monday’s matinee was a makeup from a rainout last week, pushing the Indians’ sendoff to a previously scheduled off day.

The adjustment allowed fans who wouldn’t have otherwise attended to catch history, and there were lines at the ballpark’s ticket office – an uncommon sight for a team that has struggled with attendance.

Ed Sosinski of Wickliffe, Ohio, nabbed a pair of seats in the upper deck, partly as a birthday present for his wife, Michelle, and to close a chapter.

“I was here for their first exhibition game in 1994, and I thought it was appropriate to come for the last game as Indians,” he said. “I had no excuse not to come.”

Once the Indians play their 2021 finale in Texas on Sunday, there will be a transition period before the name officially changes to Guardians, selected from over 1,000 entries submitted during a renaming process.

Cleveland fans have been understandably conflicted – and divided — about the change and expressed their wide-range of feelings as they prepared to say goodbye to the only name they’ve known.

It’s been a mixture of sadness, resentment toward owner Paul Dolan for making the switch and the anticipation of a new beginning.

Hale empathizes with those who might not be ready to see the Indians go.

“Years and years and years,” Hale said. “I know it’s different in a sense when you take on change. But I truly believe that it’s going to be embraced over the years.”

The game led to a late run on merchandise.

On Sunday, prices in the team shop were further slashed as fans bought T-shirts, caps – anything with Indians on it.

“It’s kind of cleared out,” said Gray Cooper, a high school English teacher from Lakewood, Ohio. “I’ve got enough Indians stuff that I probably won’t be wearing anymore.”

The switch to Guardians has begun.

For Monday’s game, there were 2022 schedules featuring the team’s new logo stacked in the back of the press box.

“It just doesn’t look right,” one member of a TV crew said as he passed by.

Beyond the team’s name change, it’s been a bumpy season for Cleveland on several other fronts.

An injury to reigning AL Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber played a role in the club falling too far back to catch the Chicago White Sox, who clinched their first AL Central title since 2008 last week in Cleveland.

Cleveland manager Terry Francona had to step away in July to undergo two operations, clouding his future. And, it’s been a little quieter at home games as longtime drummer John Adams wasn’t around due to health reasons.

During Monday’s game, fans posed for photos, many using the giant scripted Indians logo above the left-field scoreboard as background.

“They are still going to be our Cleveland baseball team,” Cooper said. “I have a lot of memories as a kid and I was kind of hoping they would win another World Series as the Indians. I’m hoping the Guardians can get it done before I die. That would be great.”

SIBLING RIVALRY

Bradley Zimmer’s solo shot off Kyle was just the fourth time since 1900 that a brother has homered off his brother. The others were: Joe Niekro off Phil in 1976; Rick Ferrell off Wes in 1933; and George Stovall off Jesse in 1904.

FOUR SCORE

Rosario is the first Cleveland player with six four-hit games since Joe Carter in 1986.

UP NEXT

The teams head to Kansas City for a three-game series beginning Tuesday. Cleveland will start Aaron Civale (11-5, 3.90 ERA) while the Royals have yet to announce their starter.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The first thing that Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman thinks about when he wakes up each morning is how the club, stuck in what seems like an interminable rebuild, will play on that particular day.

Not where they will play four or five years down the road.

Yet given the modest expectations for a team that lost nearly 100 games a year ago, it makes sense many Royals fans are just as interested – quite possibly more so – in the plans for a downtown ballpark than whether infielder Bobby Witt Jr. can double down on his brilliant rookie season or pitcher Brady Singer can truly become a staff ace.

That’s why Sherman’s second thought probably moves to the downtown ballpark, too.

“This is a huge decision, and I look at it as maybe the most important decision we’ll make as long as we have the privilege of stewarding this team,” Sherman said before the Royals held a final workout Wednesday ahead of opening day. “I’m probably as anxious as you to get moving on that, but it’s a complicated process.”

The Royals have called Kauffman Stadium home since the sister to Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, opened 50 years ago next month.

And while most stadiums are replaced because they have become outdated, the unique, space-aged look of Kauffman Stadium – built during an era in which teams trended toward impersonal, multisport concrete donuts for their homes – remains beloved by Royals fans and visitors alike.

The problem is that despite numerous renovations over the years, the very concrete holding the ballpark together has begun to crumble in places. The cost simply to repair and maintain the ballpark has become prohibitive.

So with the decision essentially made for them to build an entirely new stadium, the Royals revealed plans to build an entire development in the same mold of The Battery Atlanta, where the Braves built Truist Park, and the Ballpark Village in St. Louis, where the new Busch Stadium is merely the centerpiece of a whole entertainment district.

No site has been secured, but several of the most promising are in downtown Kansas City, where the Power & Light District along with T-Mobile Center have spearheaded a successful era of urban renewal.

Sherman has said that private funds would cover the majority of the stadium cost and the entire village, each carrying a price tag of about $1 billion.

But if any public funding will be used, as it was to build and maintain Kauffman Stadium, then it would need to be voted upon, and the earliest that it could show up on a ballot would be August.

“You look at Atlanta, they took some raw ground – they started with 85 acres – and that has been a complete home run,” said Sherman, who purchased the Royals in August 2019, shortly before the pandemic wreaked havoc on team finances.

“This is one of the reasons we want to do this: That’s helped the Braves become more competitive,” Sherman said of the vast potential for increased revenue for one of the smallest-market teams in baseball. “They have locked up and extended the core of their future, and the Braves are in a great position from a baseball standpoint.”

So perhaps the first two thoughts Sherman has each day – about performance and the future – are one and the same.

When it comes to the team itself, the Royals were largely quiet throughout the winter, though that was by design.

Rather than spending heavily on free agents that might help them win a few more games, they decided to stay the course with a promising young roster in the hopes that the development of those players would yield better results.

In fact, Sherman said, the club has been discussing extensions for some of the Royals’ foundational pieces – presumably Witt, who was fourth in voting for AL rookie of the year, and Singer, who was 10-5 with a 3.23 ERA last season.

“We’re having conversations about that as we speak,” Sherman said. “We have a number of young players that we’re trying to evaluate and we’re talking to their representatives about what might work.”

Just because the Royals’ roster largely looks the same, that doesn’t mean nothing has changed. The Royals fired longtime general manager Dayton Moore in September and moved J.J. Picollo to the role, then fired manager Mike Matheny in October and replaced him with longtime Indians and Rays coach Matt Quatraro.

Sherman said the new voices created a palpable energy in spring training that he hopes carries into the regular season.

“When we acquired the team, we had three primary objectives,” Sherman said. “One was to win more games; we’re working on that. The second was to secure the future; that’s what (the stadium) is. And the third was to do good in the community.

“But the first priority,” he said, “is really the on-field product. That’s what really lifts everything else up.”