Cleveland Naps

 I'm a stickler for accuracy for my cards. I know I won't be perfect, but I reuse to be knowingly wrong, and I try to make corrections on the fly. There are  number of player cards I've made and would love to post if not for the issue there is with the logos being entirely wrong. I've made this point in a previous post where I made a wish list of NL logos that should be uploaded into the Showdown Bot (the AL list is coming...eventually). I want to avoid doing modern players because everyone and their brother in the world of custom Showdown cards are falling over themselves to create those guys. I like to give the men of the past a chance to shine in Showdown, but the farther back in time I go, the more and more limited I get with the acceptable logos. Essentially, it's Yankees, then maybe the Tigers and Cardinals if I get loose with how acceptable I feel about their classic logos.

If I wanted to do 90s and 2000s players, my options open up a little more. Some teams still have restrictions (Houston Astros, I'm looking at you) but the elephant in the room for me is the Cleveland Indians. Not too long ago, Chief Wahoo got himself cancelled, and despite it being one of the most iconic logos in baseball, the Bot would like to ignore the logo ever existed. Also, I hate the block C logo the team uses. It screams "uninspired high school team". I'd love to recreate one of those mid-90s Indians teams in the Bot...but they did not use that block C as their logo, so without their proper logo available, I refuse. Until 2014, that logo was not used........

Actually, that logo was used once before.

I give you the 1904 Cleveland Naps*

Back in the simple days of baseball, we didn't have the luxury of fancy and elaborate logos. What is boring and simple today was all there was available back then. According to Sports Logos, the red block C was the teams official logo for only one season before moving on to various other forms to write the letter. Heck, the initial logo for them when they became the Indians was a block C of a different color. Headlining this 1904 team is none other than the great Nap Lajoie

The 2002-2005 Showdown hitter charts can be unforgiving to hitters, so when you only need a 5 to get Nap on base, that is fan-freaking-tastic! He's fast, he brings middle infield coverage and his chart can really hurt you if you make a mistake and give him the advantage. You can do a lot worse than having Nap on your bench to bring him out in a critical point late game.

*Sources vary on when the Cleveland baseball team switched their name from the "Blues" to the "Naps". "The "Bronchos" is also an option. Team names are a fickle thing to pin down in that era. For example, the "Red Sox" became such because that's just what everyone was already calling them to save space on newspaper pages. Baseball Reference says in 1904 Cleveland were known as the Naps, Baseball Almanac says they were the Blues. (No, I didn't check wikipedia, don't ever use wikipedia) The reason for the change was for Nap Lajoie himself in a fan vote which some say was conducted before 1904. I've made the executive decision to say Naps.

Elmer Flick was also a Hall of Famer, for what it's worth. You can also talk yourself into Bill Bradley being on your bench. Bemis and Turner are bad, but whatever. This is my only chance to utilize the block C in it's proper pre-2014 context, so I'll immortalize them as well in all their terrible glory.