The History of the Atlanta Braves: Every Era, from the First Season to Today

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 12 min read

The Atlanta Braves have played in three cities under six nicknames and have won 18 pennants and four World Series. This history walks through every era, from the Boston Red Caps to the 2021 champions, with the numbers behind each stretch.

The Atlanta Braves trace their roots to 1871, and their story is really three stories told in three cities. In Boston the club won pennants in the 1800s, produced the most famous late-season rescue in the game's early history and then spent decades near the bottom of the standings. In Milwaukee it built a young powerhouse around Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews and Warren Spahn, won a World Series and left town after thirteen seasons. In Atlanta it became the most consistent winner of the 1990s and 2000s and, after a long gap, a champion again in 2021.

The numbers make the shape of the story easy to see. Through the 2025 season the historical record credits the franchise with 11,190 wins and 11,035 losses over 150 seasons, a winning percentage of .503. That is a club that spent almost exactly half of its history above .500, but the distribution is wildly uneven: eight pennants before 1900, four more between 1914 and 1958, and then six since Atlanta's first division title in 1969.

This article takes the franchise one era at a time, using the club's season-by-season record, its postseason series and its career leaders. For the players behind the eras, see the best players in Atlanta Braves history, and for the October record in detail, see the best Atlanta Braves seasons and every October run.

Names, homes and the shape of 150 seasons

Few clubs have changed names as often as this one. The franchise began in the National Association in 1871, and the historical record picks up the story with the National League's first season in 1876. From then on it was the Boston Red Caps (1876 to 1882), the Beaneaters (1883 to 1906), the Doves (1907 to 1910), the Rustlers (1911), the Braves (1912 to 1935), the Bees (1936 to 1940) and the Braves again (1941 to 1952). The club became the Milwaukee Braves for 1953 to 1965 and the Atlanta Braves in 1966.

The homes changed almost as often. In Boston the team played at the South End Grounds in three versions, then at Braves Field from 1915 to 1952. In Milwaukee it played at County Stadium, in Atlanta at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium from 1966 to 1996, at Turner Field from 1997 to 2016, at SunTrust Park from 2017 to 2020 and at Truist Park from 2021. The last of those is the same building under a new sponsor's name; you can read more about it in the Truist Park guide.

The table puts the first lesson up front. More than a third of the club's pennants came before 1900, in an era when the World Series did not yet exist as a regular event, so the pennant was the championship. The four World Series titles are spread across more than a century: 1914, 1957, 1995 and 2021.

Boston and eight pennants before 1900

The Boston club of the 1870s and 1880s was a power. It won National League pennants in 1877 and 1878 and again in 1883, and the pitcher Tommy Bond, who worked for the club from 1877 to 1881, still holds the best career earned run average in franchise history among pitchers with at least 1,000 innings: 2.21. Treat that figure with care, because the pitching distance, the rules about throwing overhand and the length of seasons were all different then. That is the first caution for anyone comparing nineteenth-century numbers with modern ones.

The great Boston teams of the 1890s were a different matter. Frank Selee managed the club from 1890 to 1901 and won 1,004 games against 649 losses, a winning percentage of .607 over 1,677 games. The Beaneaters won pennants in 1891, 1892 and 1893, and again in 1897 and 1898. The historical data lists the 1898 team at 102-47 and the 1897 team at 93-39, and the 1897 mark is the best winning percentage of any season of 100 or more games in franchise history.

The names on that team matter because they are still on the club's leaderboards more than a century later. Kid Nichols won 330 games for the club between 1890 and 1901, which is second in franchise history behind only Warren Spahn's 356. Hugh Duffy's career batting average with the franchise, .332 over at least 3,000 at-bats, is the best in club history. Herman Long's 434 stolen bases lead the franchise, and Hugh Duffy, Billy Hamilton, Bobby Lowe and Fred Tenney fill out the rest of the top five in steals.

Fifty lean years and one miracle (1901 to 1952)

The twentieth century was unkind to the club for a long time. Boston finished last or near it in 1906 (49-102), 1909 (45-108) and 1911 (44-107), and the franchise's all-time worst winning percentages come from that period and from 1928 (50-103) and 1935. The 1935 team went 38-115, which is the worst record in club history and one of the worst in the National League's history. That was also the season in which Babe Ruth, in his final year as a player, returned to Boston and finished his career with the Braves.

Then came 1914. The Boston Braves under George Stallings, who managed the club from 1913 to 1920, were a last-place team in July and a pennant winner by the end of the season. The historical record shows a 94-59 club that finished first. The Braves then swept the Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series, four games to none. They played their home games of that Series at Fenway Park, because their own new ballpark was not yet ready. Johnny Evers, the second baseman of the old Cubs double-play trio, won the league's Most Valuable Player award that year.

After 1914 the franchise went thirty-four years without another pennant. That stretch contains the Doves, the Rustlers, the Bees and Casey Stengel, who managed the club from 1938 to 1943 and won 373 and lost 491. It contains Rabbit Maranville, who played fifteen seasons for the club, and Wally Berger, whose career average of .304 with the franchise is among the best the club has produced. And it contains the 1948 pennant, which came with Billy Southworth as manager and Bob Elliott as the previous year's MVP.

The 1948 club went 91-62, finished first and lost the World Series to Cleveland four games to two. Al Dark was Rookie of the Year that season. The pitching staff leaned so heavily on Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain that a rhyme about the club, asking for rain after those two, became one of the best-known lines in baseball.

Milwaukee: a young powerhouse, one title (1953 to 1965)

In 1953 the Braves left Boston for Milwaukee, the first franchise move in the major leagues in half a century. The move was an immediate success on the field and at the gate. The club won 92 games in 1953 and finished second, which was the first of eight consecutive finishes of third place or better, from 1953 through 1960. County Stadium drew 2,215,404 fans in its best season, an enormous number for the time.

The core was Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews and Warren Spahn, supported by Joe Adcock and Lew Burdette. Aaron joined the club in 1954 and would stay with the franchise through 1974, leaving as its all-time leader in home runs (733 with the club), hits (3,600), runs batted in (2,202) and runs scored (2,107). Mathews hit 493 home runs for the franchise and had 2,201 hits. Spahn won 356 games with the club, the most of any pitcher in its history, and 63 of his wins were shutouts. Burdette won 179 games for the franchise.

The payoff came in 1957. The Braves won 95 games and the pennant, Aaron was named the National League's Most Valuable Player, Spahn won the Cy Young Award and the club beat the New York Yankees four games to three. They returned to the World Series in 1958, won 92 games again, took a lead of three games to one over the Yankees and lost the Series in seven.

After that the club faded slowly. It finished second in 1959 and 1960 and fell to fourth, fifth and sixth in the years that followed. The attendance that had been the franchise's calling card in the mid-1950s dropped, and the owners looked elsewhere. The club played its last season in Milwaukee in 1965, finishing 86-76, and moved to Atlanta for 1966 with Aaron still in his prime.

Atlanta's first twenty-five years: Aaron, Murphy and long losing

The early Atlanta years produced a handful of great moments and a great many losing seasons. The new ballpark, which favoured home-run hitters, was the setting as Aaron reached one of the most famous milestones in baseball: in 1974 he passed Babe Ruth's career mark of 714 home runs. That was his final season with the Braves; he finished his playing career with Milwaukee's American League club.

The club's first division title came in 1969, when it won 93 games under Lum Harris, but it was swept by the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series, three games to none. Then came a stretch with little to celebrate. The Braves finished in fifth place in 1970 and 1973 and sixth in 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1979. Their 61-101 record in 1977 is among the worst in Atlanta's history.

Ted Turner's ownership, which made the club a fixture on cable television as "America's Team," led to a rebuilding effort in the late 1970s. Bobby Cox, who would become the most important figure in the club's history, first managed the Braves from 1978 to 1981. Dale Murphy was the star of the next era. He hit 371 home runs for the franchise, won the National League's Most Valuable Player award in 1982 and 1983 and led the 1982 club, managed by Joe Torre, to 89 wins and the division title. Atlanta was swept by the Cardinals in the NLCS that year.

Murphy's 1983 team won 88 games and finished second. After that the franchise fell off a cliff. The Braves went 66-96 in 1985, 54-106 in 1988, 63-97 in 1989 and 65-97 in 1990, and finished fifth or sixth in the six-team division in every season from 1985 through 1990. The pieces that would transform the club were in the farm system, but nobody outside the organisation knew it yet.

Worst to first: the 1991 pennant and the long run that followed

The turnaround in 1991 is among the largest in modern baseball. Bobby Cox, who had returned to the dugout in 1990 after serving as general manager, led the club from 65 wins to 94 and a division title. The Braves won the National League Championship Series over Pittsburgh in seven games and lost the World Series to Minnesota in seven. Terry Pendleton was the National League's MVP and Tom Glavine won the Cy Young Award.

What followed was the longest sustained run of excellence in the franchise's history. Atlanta won its division in 1991, 1992 and 1993, and then in every season from 1995 through 2005. In the strike-shortened 1994 season the Braves were 68-46 and finished second, six games behind Montreal, and no champion was crowned. That makes fourteen division titles, one in every season from 1991 through 2005 in which a division champion was crowned.

The core of that run was a rotation that remains one of the best ever assembled: Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and John Smoltz. Glavine won 244 games for the franchise and two Cy Young Awards. Maddux won three consecutive Cy Young Awards, 1993 through 1995, and posted a 2.63 earned run average in an Atlanta uniform. Smoltz won the Cy Young in 1996 and is the franchise's all-time strikeout leader with 3,011. Chipper Jones, the franchise's career leader in walks and second in hits behind Aaron, won the MVP award in 1999.

The record also shows what the run did not do. Across those fourteen division titles the Braves won only one World Series, in 1995. They lost the 1996 Series after winning the first two games, and they lost the 1999 Series in a four-game sweep. From 2002 to 2005 they lost four straight division series, three of them in five games. The 1998 team won 106 games and still lost the NLCS to San Diego. That is the most uncomfortable fact in this history, and it is also a reminder that a short postseason series is a high-variance contest even for a team that wins 100 games.

Between the eras: 2006 to 2017

The streak ended in 2006, when Atlanta finished 79-83 and third in the division. Bobby Cox retired after the 2010 season, having managed the franchise for 3,851 games and won 2,142 of them, by a wide margin the most in club history. The Braves reached the postseason as a wild card in 2010, lost to San Francisco in the division series and returned in 2012, when the new one-game wild-card round ended their season against St. Louis.

The rest of the decade had flashes. Craig Kimbrel was Rookie of the Year in 2011 and became the franchise's career saves leader with 186. The club won its division in 2013 with 96 wins, only to lose to the Dodgers in the division series, three games to one. Freddie Freeman emerged as the franchise's cornerstone and hit 271 home runs for Atlanta before his departure after the 2021 season.

Then the club rebuilt. The Braves lost 95 games in 2015 and 93 in 2016, and finished third at 72-90 in 2017, the year the club moved to SunTrust Park in Cobb County, north of downtown. Brian Snitker, who took over the club in 2016, has won 811 and lost 668 as of the end of the 2025 season. The young players who arrived through the farm system in that period set up the most recent window.

The 2018 to 2025 window and the 2021 championship

The next contender arrived early. Ronald Acuna was Rookie of the Year in 2018, when the Braves won 90 games and the division, and Atlanta won the National League East in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Freeman won the MVP award in the shortened 2020 season, and the club came within one game of the World Series that year, losing the NLCS to the Dodgers four games to three.

In 2021 the club won only 88 games, its lowest total of any full-season division winner in this stretch, but it finished the job. The Braves beat Milwaukee in the division series, beat the Dodgers four games to two in the NLCS and beat Houston four games to two in the World Series. It was the franchise's fourth title and its first since 1995.

The next two years were mirror images. The 2022 club won 101 games and the 2023 club won 104, and both lost the division series to Philadelphia, one game to three. Acuna was the National League's Most Valuable Player in 2023. Michael Harris, the 2022 Rookie of the Year, and Chris Sale, the 2024 Cy Young Award winner, are part of the same period, and in 2025 Drake Baldwin was named Rookie of the Year even as the club slipped to 76-86 and fourth place, its worst record since 2017. The club's last postseason appearance in this data was the 2024 wild-card round, in which it lost to San Diego without winning a game.

The franchise leaderboard, by era

Common questions

How many World Series has the franchise won? Four: 1914 (as the Boston Braves), 1957 (as the Milwaukee Braves), 1995 and 2021. The club has played in ten World Series and lost six of them: 1948, 1958, 1991, 1992, 1996 and 1999. Its other eight pennants came before the modern World Series began.

Are the Braves the oldest team in the major leagues? The franchise traces itself to the National Association of 1871 and to the National League's first season in 1876, and it is often described as the oldest continuously operating franchise in American professional sports. The Chicago Cubs have also played in every National League season since 1876, so the honest answer is that the two clubs are the league's oldest.

What is the franchise attendance record? 3,884,720 in 1993, at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, the year the club won 104 games and the best record in the major leagues. County Stadium's best season in Milwaukee, by comparison, was 2,215,404.

Which Braves have won the MVP? The franchise's winners are Johnny Evers (1914), Bob Elliott (1947), Hank Aaron (1957), Dale Murphy (1982 and 1983), Terry Pendleton (1991), Chipper Jones (1999), Freddie Freeman (2020) and Ronald Acuna (2023).

Where to go next

Start with the best players in Atlanta Braves history and the best seasons and October runs, then compare the franchise's story with its divisional neighbours: the Miami Marlins, the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. For the larger frame, see the history of the World Series. Current records and schedules are on the Braves team page, the Truist Park page and the NL East topic page.