Atlanta Braves Opening Day countdown: 53, moving West

Many baseball fans recount the move to California as baseball’s move West, but the Atlanta Braves organization truly opened the westward door.

When most baseball fans think of the game’s expansion West, they think about the 1958 move of the Giants and Dodgers to California, but a half-decade earlier, the Atlanta Braves organization began the westward march as they headed to the dairy land.

In 1953, the Boston Braves played their first season in Milwaukee as the Milwaukee Braves. That 1953 team that came to Milwaukee had acquired Andy Pafko, Joe Adcock, and Jim Pendleton before the season. That influx was impactful to the lineup.

Adcock hit .285/.334/.453 with 33 doubles and 18 home runs. Pafko hit .297/.347/.455 with 23 doubles and 17 home runs. Pendleton served as the team’s fourth outfielder, hitting .299/.323/.462 with 7 home runs and 6 steals in 261 plate appearances.

That 1953 Milwaukee Braves team won 92 games with Warren Spahn leading a deep staff to match with the team’s deep lineup. They didn’t win the pennant and wouldn’t until their 5th season in Milwaukee, but each year in Milwaukee would be a winning season, the worst year being 1961 when they won 83 games.

The move of the Braves to Milwaukee prompted moving West. The Philadelphia Athletics were the next to move, heading to Kansas City in 1955 (they’d move on to Oakland in 1968). The Giants and Dodgers followed for the 1958 season. The Washington Senators would wrap up the movement of long-standing franchises westward as they moved to Minnesota and became the Twins in 1961.

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In their second season in Milwaukee, a rookie would break in that would become a legend in Atlanta Braves history as 20-year-old

hit .280/.322/.447 with 27 doubles and 13 home runs over 122 games in his rookie season.

Three years later, he would be the catalyst behind the first pennant winner in Milwaukee, a Braves squad that would go on to defeat the Yankees in 7 games for a World Series as Aaron hit .322/.378/.600 with 44 home runs and 132 RBI while Spahn, Lew Burdette, and Bob Buhl formed a formidable rotation threesome.

The Braves would return to the Series in 1958 only to be ousted in 7 games by those same Yankees.

Sadly, the team couldn’t replicate their 1957-1958 success, and even though they still were a winning ballclub, they were mired in the middle of the National League, causing attendance and team support to stagnate. The team headed South to become the Atlanta Braves after 13 seasons in Milwaukee.