Atlanta played its first Southern Association game on Saturday, April 26, 1902 in Piedmont Park before a crowd of around 3,500. For 60 years, the Crackers were part of the Class AA Southern Association, a period during which they won more games than any other Association team, earning the nickname the "Yankees of the Minors". In 1962, the Association disbanded. Then, the former Miami Marlins, a Class AAAInternational League team that had spent 1961 playing in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Charleston, West Virginia, moved to Atlanta and adopted the Crackers name. The franchise was relocated to Richmond, Virginia, as the Richmond Braves after the arrival of the Atlanta Braves in 1966.
Ballparks
The Crackers played in Ponce de Leon Park from 1907 until a fire on September 9, 1923, destroyed the all-wood stadium. Spiller Field, 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. That new park was unusual because it was constructed around a magnolia tree that became part of center field. 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. The Crackers played their last season in the newly built Atlanta Stadium in 1965.
League affiliations
The Crackers were independent of major league farm systems until 1950. They then became a AA affiliate of the Boston Braves/Milwaukee Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers during the last decade of the Southern Association's existence. As an International League team, they were the top affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals, Minnesota Twins and the Braves again.
Origin of the team's name
According to Tim Darnell, who wrote The Crackers: Early Days of Atlanta Baseball, the origins of the team name is unknown. Darnell cites several possibilities as to why this name was chosen:
In reference to plowboys who cracked the whip over animals, as in Georgia cracker
A shortened version of "Atlanta Firecrackers", the earlier 1892 minor league team
However, this list does not represent the most likely origins of the name. The term cracker is derived from the Gaelic craic, meaning entertaining conversation or boasting, with the latter sense still attested in the idiom "not all it's cracked up to be." It was used in the 18th century to denote Irish and Scottish colonists of the Deep South backcountry. The Earl of Dartmouth had this to say in a 1766 correspondence: "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascals on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." During the period of Reconstruction following the American Civil War, there was also a political party of the same name. Organized in Augusta, Georgia, this party's platform was one of "opposition to Catholics and segregation of blacks". While now sometimes used as a derogatory term for a white southerner that promotes racism, it is also used as a term of pride by some white southerners to indicate one that is descended from those original settlers of the area. As in several other cities, Atlanta's local Negro league team was named after the local White league team: the Atlanta Black Crackers joined the Negro Southern League in 1920, and existed until the early 1950s.
Nat Peeples, the only African-American player in the Southern Association.
Paul Richards, a catcher and later catcher-manager with the Crackers in the 1930s
Chuck Tanner, better known as the manager of four different major league teams during the 1970s and 1980s, including the Atlanta Braves from 1986-1988.
