Editing Cleveland Spiders (section)

==Legacy==
The Robisons' decision to effectively reduce the Spiders to [[Minor league baseball|minor league]] status, along with other intra-league raiding such as that conducted by the Dodgers and to a lesser extent the [[Pittsburgh Pirates]], unwittingly helped pave the way to the National League's loss of its major league monopoly. The 12th-place Spiders were one of four teams contracted out of the National League at the end of the 1899 season (the others were the 11th-place Senators, the ninth-place [[Louisville Colonels]] and the bankrupt fourth-place [[Baltimore Orioles (1882–1899)|Baltimore Orioles]]). The 1899 fiasco played a role in the major leagues passing a rule which barred one person from owning controlling interest in two clubs.

The Robisons sold the assets of the Spiders team to Charles Somers and John Kilfoyle in 1900.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Frank Robison |url=http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=RFDH |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Cleveland History |date = 11 May 2018|publisher=[[Case Western Reserve University]] |access-date=July 13, 2020}}</ref> In 1900, the then-minor American League (previously the Western League) fielded a team called the Cleveland Lake Shores. In 1901, after the [[American League]] declared major league status, the team was called the Cleveland Blues, eventually the Cleveland Indians, and now the [[Cleveland Guardians]].

The Cleveland Guardians have long claimed Spiders outfielder [[Louis Sockalexis]] as the inspiration for their [[Cleveland Indians name and logo controversy|controversial former team name]] &ndash; "Indians" &ndash; in use from [[1915 Cleveland Indians season|1915]] to [[2021 Cleveland Indians season|2021]]. Sockalexis played three seasons for the Cleveland Spiders, from 1897 to 1899, and is often credited as the first [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] to play professional baseball at the major league level. During his time with the Spiders, the press often referred to the team as the Indians or "Tebeau's Indians".<ref>{{cite web |title=Louis Sockalexis |url=https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/louis-sockalexis/ |author=Fleitz, David |publisher=[[Society for American Baseball Research]] |website=SABR.org |access-date=July 13, 2020}}</ref> The Cleveland Guardians claim has been disputed, however, including in a 2012 ''[[Cleveland Scene]]'' essay titled "The Curse of [[Chief Wahoo]]", which argues the organization cited Sockalexis in part to justify use of the "Indians" name.<ref>{{cite web|author=Pattakos, Peter|date=April 25, 2012|title=The Curse of Chief Wahoo|url=http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/the-curse-of-chief-wahoo/Content?oid=2954423&showFullText=true|work=[[Cleveland Scene]]|access-date=January 16, 2014|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20140117015226/http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/the-curse-of-chief-wahoo/Content?oid=2954423&showFullText=true|archive-date=January 17, 2014}}</ref>