CLEVELAND — Editor's note: the video in the player above is from a previous story.
Last month, the Cleveland Indians announced that they will be changing their name to the Cleveland Guardians following the end of the 2021 season.
We now know when Cleveland's new era of Guardians baseball will officially begin.
On Wednesday, Major League Baseball officially announced its full schedule for the 2022 season. In doing so, it revealed that the Guardians will open their 2022 campaign at home in Cleveland where they will host the Kansas City Royals on Thursday, March 31.
In fact, all six of the Guardians' first six games of the season will be played at Progressive Field. After hosting the Royals for a three-game series, Cleveland will host the Minnesota Twins for a three-game series before embarking on its first road trip of the season on April 8 in Kansas City.
The Guardians' full 2022 schedule can be viewed in the document below.
The Indians' July 23 announcement that they will be changing their name came nearly one year after the team first announced that it was having discussions regarding the future of its name, which has been considered to be offensive to Native Americans. In December, the Indians officially announced that they would be changing their name, although the team didn't commit to an official timeline to do so.
Over the course of the process of selecting a new name, the organization said that it conducted 140 hours of interviews with fans, community leaders and front office personnel. "Guardians" was long considered one of the favorites to be chosen for the new name, as an homage to the "Guardians of Traffic" that look over Hope Memorial Bridge just outside of Progressive Field.