Major League Baseball Arrives in Milwaukee!

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Major League Baseball Arrives in Milwaukee!

 Sixty-five years ago this week, on Opening Day, April 13, 1953, the former Boston Braves, now the Milwaukee Braves, won their first game representing the city of Milwaukee with a three-hit, 2-0 shutout of the Reds at Crosley Field.

 Exactly one month earlier, on the day known in Boston as “Black Friday,” owner Lou Perini announced sought permission from the National League to move the Braves to Milwaukee, home of the team’s top minor-league affiliate citing poor attendance as the reason. In 1952, the Braves drew only 281,000 fans for the entire year. Only two games drew more than 10,000. And there was a great baseball town like Milwaukee begging for a major league team.

 On March 18^th, the National League owners voted 8-0 to allow the move. It brought an end to the Boston Braves’ 82 years in New England. They were the longest continuous-playing team in American professional sports, having started in 1871 as the Boston Red Stockings, a member of the National Association. 

On April 8th, 1953 the Braves pulled into Milwaukee and saw over 12,000 fans waiting at the train depot for their arrival. A welcoming parade drew 60,000 wild fans. Milwaukee was crazy for the Braves and the season hadn’t even started. 

In the April 14^th home opener, future Hall-of-Famer Warren Spahn took the mound, as 34,357 fans watched the Braves take on Cardinals. Spahn went 10 innings and Billy Bruton hit a home run in the bottom of the 10th to win it 3-2. The fans were so ecstatic that during the game they cheered everything: foul balls, strikes, hits. On May 20th, the Braves had their 13th home game of the season. With the attendance at this game, they surpassed the entire 1952 Boston season total. The Braves set an all-time National League attendance mark with 1.826,397. They finished second at 92-62-3, 13 games behind the Dodgers.

In the featured photo below, we see the great Hall-of-Famer, Hank Aaron with the Milwaukee Braves in 1954. Click on the link to see more of “the  Braves in Milwaukee!”:

The Braves spent 13 seasons in Milwaukee, winning pennants in 1957 and ’58, and a World Series championship in 1957.The team’s second season in Milwaukee saw the debut of a promising young player named Hank Aaron. “Hammerin’ Hank” slugged 398 of his 755 career home runs in Milwaukee, and he earned his lone MVP award in 1957, leading both leagues with 44 homers and 132 RBIs.

In 1966 the Braves were on the move again, this time to Atlanta. This has been the franchise’s most successful era, with a World Series title in 1995, five NL pennants and a whopping 17 division titles (including a streak of 11 consecutive from ’95 to 2005).

Gary Livacari

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Photo Credits: All from Google search

Information: Excerpts edited from the Milwaukee Braves Wikipedia page.

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