Southern Association (1903-1961)
International League (1962-1965)
Tombstone
Born: 1903
Folded: Postseason 1965
First Game: April 27, 1903 (L 4-2 vs. Montgomery Whistlers)
Last Game: September 6, 1965 (L 4-3 @ Toronto Maple Leafs)
Southern Association Pennants:
1907, 1909, 1913, 1917, 1919, 1925, 1935, 1936, 1938, 1941, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1950, 1954, 1956, 1957, 1960
Southern Association Playoff Champions: 1935, 1938, 1946, 1954, 1956, 1957
Governors’ Cup Champions: 1962
Stadia
1903-1906: Piedmont Park
1907-1964: Ponce de Leon Park
Opened: 1907
Demolished: 1966
1965: Atlanta Stadium
Opened: 1965
Demolished: 1997
Ownership & Affiliation
Owners:
- 1920’s: Rell Spiller
- 1932-1949: Coca Cola Company (Robert Woodruff)
- 1949-1959: Earl Mann
- 1960-1965:
Major League Affiliations:
- 1950-1952: Boston Braves
- 1953-1959: Milwaukee Braves
- 1960-1961: Los Angeles Dodgers
- 1962-1963: St. Louis Cardinals
- 1964: Minnesota Twins
- 1965: Milwaukee Braves
Background
Major League Baseball touched down in Atlanta in 1966 with arrival of the Braves from Milwaukee. The move marked the end of the city’s tremendously successful and once-popular minor league club, the Atlanta Crackers.
The Crackers played for 63 seasons and were mainstays of the Southern Association from 1903 until the loop’s demise in 1961. The Crackers’ 18 pennants were a league record. When Southern Association disbanded in 1961, the Crackers jumped to the International League and played four more seasons. The team’s last hurrah came in 1962 as a farm club of the St. Louis Cardinals. The 1962 Crackers won the International League’s Governor’s Cup championship and then bested the Louisville Colonels of the American Association in the Junior World Series.
Racial Segregation
After the Crackers fell on hard times during the Great Depression, the team was propped up financially by the Coca Cola Company, who owned the club outright from 1932 to 1949. Under Coca-Cola’s stewardship, the Crackers played the first racially integrated sporting event in Atlanta, a three-game exhibition series against the Brooklyn Dodgers in April 1949. The Dodgers, who were on their way back to New York from spring training in Florida, featured Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella. The Crackers and the Dodgers defied a Ku Klux Klan-directed boycott petition and picket of Brooklyn’s hotel to stage the series before huge crowds at Ponce de Leon Park, including thousand of black baseball fans.
Although Coca-Cola continues to tout the Crackers-Dodgers series in their modern day corporate PR, it’s important to note just how poor the Crackers’ overall record on integration was by virtue of their participation in the reactionary Southern Association. The Southern Association remained proudly segregated to its dying day in 1961, long after the integration of Major League Baseball. Nat Peeples appeared two games for the Atlanta Crackers in 1954 (both on the road) and was the only black player even to don a Southern Associaton uniform. Ponce de Leon Park was segregated for Crackers games. (Ponce de Leon also hosted the city’s Negro League team, the Atlanta Black Crackers). After the Southern Association disbanded and the Crackers joined the International League, the team began to add black players, including Hank Aaron’s younger brother Tommie Aaron (Crackers ’65).
Ponce de Leon Park(s)
For most of their existence, the Crackers played in a pair of ballparks known as Ponce de Leon Park. The original Ponce de Leon Park was a wooden structure that opened in 1907 and burned to the ground in 1923. Crackers owner Rell Spiller financed a concrete-and-steel replacement that opened in 1924 and bore his name (Spiller Park) until Coca-Cola took over and re-established the old Ponce de Leon name in 1933.
For many years, Ponce de Leon Park featured a large Magnolia tree in deep center field which was in play. Eventually, long-time Crackers exec and owner Earl Mann moved the fences in, taking the tree out of play. Urban legend has it that Hall of Famers Babe Ruth and Eddie Mathews both blasted home runs into the branches of the Magnolia tree. Ponce de Leon Park was demolished in 1966, but the Magnolia tree still stands behind the loading dock of a Home Depot.
For their final season of play, the Crackers move into the brand new Atlanta Stadium in 1965. The ballpark was built to attract Major League Baseball and by this point the Milwaukee Braves had already declared their intention to move to Atlanta. The Crackers disbanded at the end of the 1965 season.
Trivia
Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell served a batboy for the Crackers as a young boy in the 1920’s. He returned in the early 1940’s as a radio play-by-play man for two spells, interrupted by his war service. In 1948, Crackers owner Earl Mann traded Harwell to Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey for catcher Cliff Dapper.
Atlanta Crackers Shop
Editor's Pick
The Crackers
Early Days of Atlanta Baseball
By Tim Darnell
Beginning in an era before traffic jams, air-conditioning, and Atlanta’s ascension to international fame, Tim Darnell chronicles the emergence of amateur and minor-league baseball in various forms in Atlanta from just after the Civil War through the rise of the Crackers (1901–65).
Also profiled is the Black Crackers, Atlanta’s Negro Southern League franchise whose success and popularity paralleled those of their white counterparts.
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Atlanta Crackers Video
1939 Atlanta Crackers opening day newsreel.
Links
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7 Responses
What were the ground rules regarding the tree in play at the Ponce De Leon Park? Could a fielder catch the ball after it fell through the branches after a hit?
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.
My dad, Bob Moreland, played second base for the Crackers in 1927-29 or 30. Had a 1 year break when traded to Macon (Bears, I believe) about 28 I think. Have any info on this?
https://www.statscrew.com/minorbaseball/roster/t-ac10221/y-1945
You can use this website to look at the roster by year
My dad Eddie W Brigham played for the Crackers in ‘47. Does
Anyone know how can I get more info on that. My brothers and his grandsons would like to know what his jersey number was if their jerseys had numbers.
https://www.statscrew.com/minorbaseball/roster/t-ac10221/y-1945
Check out this website. It list the roster each year. I did not find your fathers name in 1947, 46 or 45 but I had an uncle that also played for them and I don’t see his name either. Keep looking, look at all years and good luck.
It is interesting to note that the Atlanta Crackers integrated their team before the New York Yankees (1955), Philadelphia Phillies (1957), Detroit Tigers (1958), and Boston Red Sox (1959) did so.