Overview
The name Boston Braves has been used by multiple professional sports teams based in Boston. It is best known as the identity of a National League baseball franchise that played in Boston for many decades before relocating to Milwaukee and later to Atlanta. The name has also been applied briefly to teams in other sports and levels, creating a layered local legacy across baseball, football and hockey.
Boston Braves (baseball)
The baseball club that carried the Boston Braves name traces its origins to the 19th century and was one of the long‑established franchises of professional baseball. The club achieved national attention with the 1914 "Miracle Braves," who rose from last place in July to win the National League pennant and the World Series. Declining attendance and financial pressures after World War II led the franchise to leave Boston, moving to Milwaukee for the 1953 season and later to Atlanta in the 1960s, where it continues to compete today as the Atlanta Braves. The franchise has won additional championships after leaving Boston, extending the competitive lineage that began in New England.
Other teams called Boston Braves
- Football: An early National Football League team used the Boston Braves name in the early 1930s. That club changed its identity to the Boston Redskins and subsequently relocated to Washington, D.C., where it became one of the league's long‑running franchises.
- Hockey: A short‑lived minor‑league hockey club in the early 1970s also carried the Boston Braves name while serving as a farm team for an NHL franchise. The team operated for a few seasons before folding or being relocated.
Identity and legacy
Across its uses, the Boston Braves name evokes early 20th‑century sporting traditions and the practice of reusing nicknames across different teams and sports. The baseball franchise's multiple relocations and name continuity illustrate how a single organization can carry a long institutional history despite changes in city and era. Like many American team names of its era, the Braves identity was associated with Native American imagery and symbols; that association has been the subject of discussion and reconsideration in recent decades as attitudes toward such imagery have evolved.
Where the name appears today
The most direct descendant of the Boston baseball club is the Atlanta Braves, who publicly acknowledge their franchise history that began in Boston. Other short‑lived uses of the Boston Braves name survive mainly in historical accounts, team histories and museum displays documenting Boston's sporting past.