March 9th in baseball history: a real Cleveland Indian  The
"Indian" who played for Cleveland  Louis SockalexisCLEVELAND,
OHIO | MARCH 9, 1897 - A member of the Penobscot Indian tribe
was signed by the National League Cleveland Spiders on this date
in 1897, and some later claimed that's where Cleveland's
American League franchise got its name.  Louis Sockalexis showed
superb athletic ability and ferocious power playing baseball as
a kid on the Penobscot reservation in Maine. Stories, some of
them apocryphal, had him throwing a ball 600 feet over the
Penobscot River and hitting a baseball just as far.  He went on
to play ball at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts
before transfering to the University of Notre Dame in 1897.
Sockalexis didn't stay long at Notre Dame. He was signed by the
Cleveland Spiders in August of His career didn't last long,
before the turn the century he was no longer a major league
baseball player. Heavy drinking reportedly took its toll.
Sockalexis died in 1913 at age 42.  A