Following Friday's announcement that the Cleveland Indians are exploring the possibility to changing the name of the franchise, the team's manager, Terry Francona, spoke out about the subject for the first time on Sunday, stating that he thinks that it's time to do more listening on the subject, and that "it's time to move forward" with discussions on the potential of changing the long time nickname of the Cleveland MLB franchise.
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00:00 Hi everyone, I'm Matt Lodi with Cleveland Baseball Insider here on SI.com.
00:04 Well, it's been the hot-button topic issue all weekend long here in Cleveland, and that
00:08 of course is the potential name change of the Cleveland Indians.
00:12 There's been plenty of discussion on both sides, and the Athletic broke the story on
00:15 Friday night that the Indians have had preliminary discussions in potentially moving away from
00:21 the Indians name.
00:22 Of course, the team also moved away from Chief Wahoo before the start of last season on uniforms
00:26 and hats, but now they may just scrap the Indians name altogether.
00:30 One person who spoke about it on Sunday of great influence is of course Indians manager
00:34 Terry Francona.
00:36 Francona was asked what he thought on the topic, and he said it's been something that
00:39 he's been thinking about himself before this even came up.
00:43 He also said it could be time for a change.
00:45 He said that they have tried not to be disrespectful when it comes to talking about it amongst
00:50 themselves as well as with Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff.
00:54 Francona went on to say that you never know, it could be time to have more lengthy discussions
00:59 on the topic of changing the name away from the Indians.
01:02 Of course, the Cleveland Indians as they've been known have been known as such since the
01:06 early 1900s.
01:08 Now the Indians might have to go away from that, and who knows what nickname they'll
01:12 come up with.
01:13 With Cleveland Baseball Insider on SI.com, I'm Matt Lodi.