Atlanta Braves

The Atlanta Braves are the only existing Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise to have played every season since professional baseball came into existence. Founded in Boston in 1871, the franchise has moved twice: it began playing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1953 and then in Atlanta in 1966. The team has won four World Series titles: 1914, 1957, 1995, and 2021.

Origins in Boston and the Braves’ first World Series championship

The franchise was founded by Ivers Whitney Adams in 1871 as the Boston Red Stockings, one of nine charter members of the National Association of Professional Baseball Players, the forerunner of the National League. During its 82-year stay in Boston, the team was known by various nicknames, including Doves, Rustlers, and Beaneaters, but it finally settled on Braves in 1912, the name that would stick with the team to the present day (except for an interlude as the Bees during the 1930s).

While in Boston the team won four National Association pennants (1872–75), 10 National League pennants, and a memorable World Series championship in 1914 that came after a season in which the Braves were in last place as late as July 15—a turnaround that led to the nickname “Miracle Braves.” Babe Ruth finished his career with the Braves in 1935, when he hit his 714th career home run, an MLB record that would stand for nearly four decades.

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In 1948 the Braves reached the World Series largely as a result of their two dominant pitchers, Warren Spahn and Johnny Spain, who inspired the slogan “Spahn and Spain and pray for rain.”

A move to Milwaukee and another World Series title

After losing many of their fans to Boston’s American League team (the Red Sox) by the early 1950s, partly because the Braves posted a losing record in 26 of the 38 seasons after their World Series win, the franchise moved to Milwaukee in 1953. Playing in Milwaukee County Stadium, the restructured team quickly improved.

The team’s most notable player of this era was outfielder Hank Aaron, who won the NL batting championship in 1956 with a .328 average and earned the title of NL’s Most Valuable Player in 1957. Together with third baseman Eddie Mathews and the pitchers Spahn and Lew Burdette, Aaron led the Braves to two NL pennants, in 1957 and 1958, and a World Series victory over the New York Yankees, in 1957. Mathews, a career 12-time All-Star, was described in 1954 as “the most dangerous hitter in baseball today” by Rogers Hornsby, and Burdette was named the 1957 World Series MVP after pitching three complete games, winning all of them.

The Braves returned to the World Series in 1958, but they lost to the Yankees. The team finished with a winning record in each of their seven remaining seasons in Milwaukee. In fact, the Braves never had a losing record there. But an ownership change in 1962 and a significant decline in ballpark attendance during the 1960s resulted in the team moving to Atlanta after the 1965 season, even as a lawsuit filed by the state of Wisconsin attempting to block the move moved through the courts. (Wisconsin eventually lost.)

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Aaron’s triumph in Atlanta

The Braves began a lackluster run after they began playing in Atlanta in 1966, finishing somewhere between the middle and the bottom of the National League (1966–68) or their division (1969–81) for 16 years. The one exception was 1969, when the Braves won the NL West but lost the National League Championship Series (NLCS) to the New York Mets. Despite the team’s struggles, Hank Aaron continued a career that included 25 appearances in the All-Star Game, three Gold Gloves, and a constant barrage of home runs.

When the 1974 season began, it was clear that Aaron would quickly break Babe Ruth’s record of 714 career home runs. He did so on April 8, 1974, during a game at Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Braves radio announcer Milo Hamilton declared, “There’s a new home run champion of all time, and it’s Henry Aaron!” Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully reflected that “A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol.” In 1975 Aaron returned to Milwaukee, to play for the Brewers, and retired in 1976 with 755 home runs.

Niekro ascendant

In 1976 the team was purchased by media entrepreneur Ted Turner, who, in 1979, began airing all the Braves’ games to a national audience on his cable “superstation,” WTCG (WTBS, or TBS). The station declared the Braves “America’s Team,” and the team’s national profile rose, even though it finished last in its division each season from 1976 through 1979.

Phil Niekro, an enduring knuckleball pitcher who had been with the Braves since the 1960s, was among the team’s most notable players during this period; he led the major leagues in games started and innings pitched from 1977 through 1979.

The Braves lurched into the playoffs in 1982 after winning the NL West, though they again lost in the NLCS, this time to the St. Louis Cardinals. In 1986 the team was again last in its division, and it would repeat that finish three more times between 1987 and 1990.

Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz

In 1991 the Braves reached the World Series, which they lost to the Minnesota Twins. Revitalized under the leadership of general manager John Schuerholz and manager Bobby Cox, the Braves of the 1990s were led by the young pitching trio of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz—each of whom won at least one Cy Young Award with the Braves—and hitters including David Justice, Chipper Jones, and Andruw Jones.

During the 1990s and early 2000s the Braves had one of the most remarkable runs in U.S. sports history, winning an unprecedented 14 division titles in the 15 years from 1991 to 2005. (They finished second in their division in the 1994 season, which was cut short by a labor dispute.) The team played in the World Series five times in the 1990s and won once, in 1995, when it defeated the team now known as the Cleveland Guardians. Glavine, who pitched two World Series wins, was named the series MVP.

A playoff drought began in 2006, when the Braves finished third in their division, and ended in 2010. The team quickly exited the first round of the playoffs in 2010, however, losing to the San Francisco Giants. Cox retired as manager after that loss; he had led the team twice, from 1978 to 1981 and again from 1990 to 2010.

Rebuilding to a 2021 World Series title and beyond

In 2011 the Braves surrendered an 8 1/2-game lead in the wild card standings with four weeks remaining in the season, and they missed the playoffs. They returned to postseason play in 2012 but were eliminated by the St. Louis Cardinals in the MLB’s newly instituted one-game wild card playoff game. In 2013, buoyed by first baseman Freddie Freeman’s breakout season, the Braves won their first division title in eight years, but they were again eliminated in their opening playoff series.

After a disappointing 2014 season, the team entered a rebuilding period. Atlanta went from losing 90 games in 2017 to winning 90 games in 2018, surprising many analysts by winning their division. Ronald Acuña, Jr., was a key part of the Braves’ success: he hit .293 and 26 home runs on his way to winning the NL Rookie of the Year Award.

The young Braves roster continued to improve in 2019: the team won 97 games and another division title before losing to the Cardinals in its first postseason series. Acuña also improved in his second year, leading the NL with 37 stolen bases and starting his first All-Star Game. Atlanta returned to the National League Championship Series (NLCS) in 2020, but the team gave up a 3–1 series lead and was eliminated by the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Braves earned their revenge in 2021 when they defeated the Dodgers in a six-game NLCS to advance to their first World Series appearance in 22 years. They then defeated the Houston Astros in six games to capture the franchise’s fourth championship. Braves outfielder Jorge Soler was named World Series MVP with a series slugging percentage of .800 and three home runs. He had been acquired by the team in July, while he was struggling with the Kansas City Royals, after Acuña suffered a season-ending knee injury.

The Braves again won their division in 2022 and 2023, but they lost to the Philadelphia Phillies both seasons in the NL Division Series. Acuña stormed to a record-setting season in 2023: in the wake of rule changes, including a new pitch clock, that benefited base runners, he stole 73 bases and hit 41 home runs, becoming only the fifth member of baseball’s 40-40 club and the first of that club to steal more than 50 bases.

Controversies over the Braves name and tomahawk chop

Known by a variety of names during its early years in Boston, the team formally adopted the Braves name in 1912, and the franchise has used it ever since. (In 1936–40, during a period of ownership tumult, the team was renamed the Bees. The name did not stick.) James E. Gaffney, a New York politician, bought the team in 1911, and he reportedly chose the Braves name because it echoed the Native-themed symbolism used by Tammany Hall, the political machine in New York City through which Gaffney made his fortune.

Upon becoming the Braves, the team also adopted a logo depicting a person in profile wearing what resembles a warbonnet. That logo came and went over the following decades, and it was also substantially changed—the person’s skin color shifted from red to brown, for example, and the headdress was altered. During the 1950s, after the team moved to Milwaukee, the team’s logo was overhauled: the new design depicted, in three-quarter view, a person wearing a mohawk hairstyle, a feather, and an earring. The person is typically described as screaming or, less often, laughing; the former suggests a stereotyped representation of a “war whoop” or “war cry” that has been attributed to some Native peoples. By the 1990s the team was using a primary logo consisting of the word “Braves” in script above a stylized tomahawk, which can be traced back to its jerseys of the 1940s.

The team has also fostered a variety of Native-themed symbols and celebrations that, along with its logos, have been criticized for decades as perpetuating racist stereotypes that dehumanize Native peoples. A mascot, portrayed by a variety of people and eventually named Chief Noc-A-Homa in 1966, appeared in “Native” dress and occupied a tepee during games in Milwaukee and Atlanta through the 1985 season. The origins of the fan celebration known as the tomahawk chop are often tied to Deion Sanders joining the Braves in 1991; Sanders had played baseball and football at Florida State University, where a similar celebration began in the 1980s, and Atlanta’s fans greeted him with it. The chant was later supported with stadium music and franchise-provided foam tomahawks. In 2021, when the Braves reached the World Series, the tomahawk chop came under sustained scrutiny, in the wake of nationwide protests in 2020 against systemic racism following the murder of George Floyd. Rob Manfred, the MLB commissioner, did not object to “the chop”; his justification—“The Native American community in that region is fully supportive of the Braves’ program, including the chop”—was disputed by the National Congress of American Indians, among other people and organizations.