$2,000 Q. Who are the Atlanta Braves?
The logical assumption is that the Braves’ nickname is an allusion to the traits of native warriors. Almost nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, the name traces back to 1912 when a man named Charles Gaffney purchased the Boston National League franchise. Over the past decade, the franchise had been known by various names of steadily decreasing quality: Beaneaters, then Doves, then Rustlers.
The last two alluded to the team owner, a fellow named Dovey followed by a fellow named Russell.
Nobody proposed calling Gaffney’s new team “The Gaffs,” which would have been pretty hilarious. At the time, however, Gaffney was best known for his connection to the New York City-based Democratic organization, Tammany Hall. He was a Tammany-backed alderman in New York.
If you were tied to Tammany Hall in those days, you were colloquially known as one of the Tammany Braves. Thus it was an easy transition, if a political slap, to allude to Gaffney’s newly purchased team as the Braves.
Gaffney went farther than that. In 1912, he immediately adopted an Indian headdress — the widely recognized symbol of a Tammany Hall politician — for his “Braves.” The team continued to use the Tammany logo until 1920, several years after Gaffney had sold the team.
Differing, non-Tammany versions of a Braves logo have periodically resurfaced, notably in the 1930s and 1950s, before falling permanently out of favor in the early 1990s.