Atlanta Crackers
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The Atlanta Crackers (distinct from the Atlanta Black Crackers) were a minor league baseball team based in Atlanta, Georgia from 1901 to 1965. The Crackers were Atlanta's home team until the Atlanta Braves moved from Milwaukee in 1966.
For the first sixty years of their existence they were part of the Southern Association, a period during which they won more games than any other Association team, earning the nickname the "Yankees of the Minors"[1]. In 1962, after the Association disbanded[2], the Crackers joined the International League[1].
The Crackers played in Ponce de Leon Park from 1907 until a fire on September 9, 1923 destroyed the all-wood stadium[3]. Spiller Field (a stadium later also called Ponce de Leon Park), became their home starting in the 1924 season; it was named in honor of a wealthy businessman who paid for the new concrete-and-steel stadium[4]. That new park was unusual because it was constructed around a magnolia tree that became part of the outfield. Balls landing in the tree remained in play, until Earl Mann took over the team in 1947 and had the outfield wall moved in about fifty feet[5]. The Crackers played their last season in the newly-built Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium[2].
The Crackers were independent of major league farm systems until 1950. In their final decade and a half, they were affiliated with the Braves of both Boston and Milwaukee (1950-58), the Los Angeles Dodgers (1959-61), St. Louis Cardinals (1962-63), Minnesota Twins (1964), and, in their final season, they were the top farm team of the big-league Braves, playing a lame-duck season in Milwaukee under court order.
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[edit] Origin of the team's name
The origins of the team's name are unknown, according to Tim Darnell, who wrote The Crackers: Early Days of Atlanta Baseball [6]. He cited three theories during a talk before a University of Georgia audience in 2002[7]:
- It may have been a shortened version of the name of a 19th century professional baseball team, the Atlanta Firecrackers.
- It may have come from the now sometimes-derogatory nickname for poor, uneducated white Southerners, often specifically Georgians, and with equally obscure etymology.
- It could be a reference to a then-colloquial term for someone who is quick and smart, a variant on "Cracker Jack ballplayer", for example.
While the "Georgia cracker" is the most obvious association, it raises a question as to why a Negro League ball club would have called itself "Black Crackers".
[edit] Well-known players
Famous members of the team included:
- Luke Appling a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame who later played for the Chicago White Sox
- Art Fowler, longtime major league pitcher and pitching coach
- Lloyd Gearhart, who later played with the New York Giants
- Eddie Mathews, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, later the only man to play for the Braves in Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta
- Tim McCarver, who went on to become a catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals
- Bob Montag, who hit 113 home runs, the most of any Cracker and the second-most in Association history[8]
- Nat Peeples, the only African-American player in the Southern Association
- Chuck Tanner, who is better known as the manager of four different major league teams during the 1970s and 1980s
[edit] References
- ^ a b http://www.atlantacracker.com/team.htm
- ^ a b http://dev.ngerr.gsu.edu/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-838
- ^ http://dev.ngerr.gsu.edu/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2475
- ^ http://www.atlantacracker.com/stadium.htm
- ^ Tree stands as link to city's baseball roots, an April 25, 2003 article from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
- ^ The Crackers: Early Days of Atlanta Baseball (Athens, GA: Hill Street Press, 2003) by Tim Darnell http://hillstreetpress.com/Crackers.html
- ^ http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/072602/uga_20020726012.shtml
- ^ http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2800
[edit] External links
- Baseball In Georgia, from a University of Georgia website
