Atlanta Braves

Atlanta Braves, American professional baseball team based in Atlanta. The team is the only existing major league franchise to have played every season since professional baseball came into existence. They have won four World Series titles (1914, 1957, 1995, and 2021) and 18 National League (NL) pennants.

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 NL. During its 82-year stay in Boston, the team was known by various nicknames, including Red Stockings, Red Caps, Rustlers, and Bees, but finally settled on Braves. While in Boston the team won four National Association pennants (1872–75), 10 NL 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.” 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.”

After losing many of their fans to Boston’s American League team (Red Sox) by the early 1950s, partly because the Braves posted a losing record in all but 12 of the 38 seasons since their World Series win, the franchise moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1953. Playing in Milwaukee County Stadium, the restructured team quickly improved, winning two pennants (1957, 1958) and a World Series (1957), behind the hitting of Hank Aaron and Eddie Matthews and the pitching of Spahn and Lew Burdette. The Braves finished with a winning record in each of their 13 seasons in Milwaukee, but their success could not prevent a precipitous decline in ballpark attendance in the 1960s, which led to the team moving to Atlanta after the 1965 season.

In 1976 the team was purchased by media entrepreneur Ted Turner, who began airing all the Braves’ games to a national audience on his cable “superstation,” WTCG (WTBS, or TBS, from 1979). While many criticized TBS’s prominent coverage of the recently poor team with a mostly regional appeal as both unnecessary and overly biased—the station blithely billed the Braves as “America’s Team”—the Braves’ national profile was nonetheless raised by the broadcasts, and the team eventually became one of the more popular in the country.

After suffering through many dreadful seasons and only making the playoffs twice (1969, 1982) in its first 25 seasons in Atlanta, the team was revitalized in the 1990s under the leadership of general manager John Schuerholz and manager Bobby Cox. This new Braves team was 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 such as David Justice and Chipper 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 consecutive division titles from 1991 to 2005 (with the exception of the 1994 season, which because of a labour dispute was not finished), playing in the World Series five times in the 1990s, and winning the organization’s third World Series championship in 1995. In 2007 Time Warner (which had acquired the team in a 1996 merger with Turner Broadcasting System) sold the Braves, and TBS stopped its national broadcasts of the team’s games.

The Braves went back to the postseason in 2010, losing in their first playoff series. In 2011 the team surrendered an 8 ¹/₂-game lead in the Wild Card standings with four weeks remaining in the season to miss the playoffs, which was the second worst September collapse in Major League Baseball history. The Braves returned to postseason play in 2012 but were quickly eliminated by the St. Louis Cardinals (the team that had edged out Atlanta for the Wild Card the previous season) in the newly instituted one-game Wild Card playoff game. In 2013 the Braves won their first division title in eight years but were again eliminated in their opening playoff series.

After a disappointing follow-up season during which Atlanta missed the postseason, the team entered into a rebuilding period that saw the Braves post the franchise’s worst record in a quarter century in 2015 (67–95). Atlanta went from losing 90 games in 2017 to winning 90 games in 2018, qualifying for the playoffs before most baseball analysts expected the young team to do so, although the Braves lost their opening playoff series in just four games. The young Braves roster continued to improve in 2019, winning 97 games and another division title before again losing its first postseason series. 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 in seven games. The Braves earned their revenge the following season when they defeated the Dodgers in a six-game NLCS to advance to their first World Series appearance in 22 years. Atlanta then defeated the Houston Astros in six games to capture the franchise’s fourth championship.