After decades of resisting calls to change their name, the Cleveland Indians announced last July that they would discuss the future of their moniker in the wake of intensified calls for social reform throughout the country. Five months later, the team went a step further, saying it would drop the name it has used since 1915, beginning as soon as the 2022 season.
Within days of the initial summer announcement, the United States Patent and Trademark Office received several trademark filings for potential new names. Among them was an early favorite option among oddsmakers: the Cleveland Spiders.
But the request didn’t come from anyone representing the baseball team. Instead, the application was submitted by a man who lives in a suburb of Portland, Ore., and works for a cellphone company.
How Arlen Love, 33, ended up here is a story about many things:
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