Atlanta Braves win at more than the game on the field on Sunday

While the major league team earned an extra-inning victory over the Oakland Athletics, the Atlanta Braves scored an even more important victory – on Twitter.

Every major league team’s fan base likes to think they have a special social media presence. For Atlanta Braves fans, they hashtag that group of fans as #BravesFam.

There are great stories of meetups that the team’s fans will put together using the hashtag and also fun conversations that happen using that hashtag centered around the team’s performance and its players.

However, when an online community seems to come together best is when a member of that community is hurting. Recently, the #BravesFam group was brought to action by outspoken fan @BravesOwner:

Then today, tragedy hit the #BravesFam community:

No sooner than the first tears falling did a post go up with an idea. The Atlanta Braves opened a new ball park in 2017, SunTrust Park. Part of the experience is being able to inscribe a message on a brick at the park. #BravesFam member Warren Bennett had an awesome idea to band together the Twitter community in honor of one of their own:

This got the notice of the entire #BravesFam community, and in less than an hour the entire amount needed was raised, and then some. Warren announced that all proceeds above and beyond the price of the brick would go to the family. The post drew attention even outside of the #BravesFam network:

However, drawing the attention of an ESPN writer isn’t going to be the final ending to this story. The final ending came when the Atlanta Braves team Twitter account responded to Warren:

Sure, it’s less than $200, a drop in the bucket for a major league organization, but the Atlanta Braves knew that a significant group of their fan base was hurting, and this was a way they could help to honor the memory of one of their fans.

While we as writers often get into the tear-down of teams and players over money and their seeming distance from the fans in so many ways in daily stories that come out, stories like this bring you right back to realizing that these teams know that they exist only because of the fans. Even before today, one of the things you’ll find in the Twitter bio for the Atlanta Braves Twitter handle is the hash tag #BravesFam.

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I want to take an editorial note here to wish my personal condolences to the family of Jeremy. He was not only a baseball fan, and the tragic loss of a baseball fan so young should really affect all of us as baseball fans, but he was for me personally someone who had followed my work for some time and supported me as a writer. While the outreach of the Braves team is an awesome thing in this story, there is still a grieving family to consider here, and my most heartfelt wishes are that you can find peace and understanding at this time of tragic loss.