Aerial shot of Braves Field and the Allston Rail Yard, circa 1948.
Same shot today. The former Allston Rail Yard is now the Mass Pike. The former Boston and Albany railroad tracks are still there, used by Amtrak and the T Commuter Rail. Harvard owns the remainder and has a major construction project underway.
Closer aerial view.. The Mass Pike was built next to the field in the mid-60s, but the field is easy to see as you drive by.
How it looks today. The field and the right field field Pavlion A are still there.
Pavilion A in right field in 1915.
Pavilion A seen in the aerial shots above is still there today.
This plaque is inside the old entrance, which is still standing. It’s there to let BU students from all over the world know that this used to be a Major League ballpark.
Looking up Gaffney Street toward the Pavilion A seats and main entrance. The back of the scoreboard is in the foreground and bleaches are in front of it. When the Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953 they took the scoreboard with them.
The Braves office building and entrance and part of the outfield wall are still standing 100 years later. The field is also still there, but with no diamond.
Photo of the offices and entrance to Braves Field on Opening Day 1915 looking from the corner of Comm Ave and Gaffney Street.
Same shot was taken by me in 2002.
Boston has had Major League Baseball for over 150 years – longer than any other city – and the franchise that is now the Atlanta Braves is the longest-running pro sports franchise in the world, dating back to 1871. That’s why the food concessions at SunTrust Park, the new Braves ballpark in Atlanta, are called the 1871 grille.
Braves Field was the home park of the Boston Braves from 1915-1952. Quick backstory: The first professional baseball team was the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869 and 1870. Despite what fans in Cincinnati will tell you, they were not a major league team because there were no major leagues yet and there were no other professional teams to play. So they played pickup games – called barnstormers back then – against company teams, much like a men’s slowpitch league today.
After a couple of years of these barnstorming games, this whole baseball thing was becoming very popular, so a league called the National Association of Base Ball Clubs was formed in 1871. The Red Stockings were going to be a charter team, but the manager and a majority of the players decided they’d rather play in Boston…so they became the Boston Red Stockings…and Cincinnati had no team to field. Teams came and went each year of the National Association, but the Boston Red Stockings were the only team to last through all five years of this first league.
In 1876 a new, more organized league was formed: the National League as we know it today. Boston was a charter team, making the franchise the longest-running. Cincinnati, after 5 years with no team, came into the NL in 1876 as a different charter team and wanted to use Red Stockings as a name. It was common practice in the early days for teams to be known by the city they represented and it was not unusual for team nicknames to change. The Boston franchise was no exception. They decided to let Cincinnati have Red Stockings, as they had the name first. They became the Red Caps, then the Beaneaters, Rustlers, Doves (odd name, of course, but I’ll explain that farther down), and finally the Braves. They played at the South End Grounds from 1871 until 1914, when they surprised everyone by going from last place on the 4th of July to 1st place at season’s end and won the World Series.
This is a souvenir program book commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Boston Braves (1876-1951). They actually began as a charter team in the National Association of Base Ball Clubs in 1871.
1876 was when the National League debuted. The Boston Red Caps (as they were known then) played the National League’s very first game on April 22, 1876, beating the Philadelphia Athletics, 6-5. That Philadelphia team only lasted one year and is different from the Philadelphia Phillies and the American League Philadelphia Athletics who debuted in 1901 (now the Oakland Athletics).
The ad for Cott has a memory for me. Cott was a soft drink company that did a lot of business in Boston, especially their Ginger Ale. The ads always used the slogan, “It’s Cott to be good” and they instructed all radio announcers – myself included – to hit the tt at the end of the name. “It’s Cott to be good. That way Cott wouldn’t sound like a burp when you said it on the radio.
Interesting tidbit #1:
In both 1914 and 1915 the World Series was played between Boston and Philadelphia. Both resulted in Boston wins, but four different teams were involved and the games in Boston were all played at the other team’s field. Huh?
Nobody expected the 1914 Braves to get to the World Series. As I mentioned, they were in last place on July 4th. But the Miracle Braves had an amazing second half and won the pennant. The South End Grounds, where the Braves played, only held about 9000 and the World Series was expected to attract a much larger crowd. It did, so the Red Sox invited the Braves to play the home games at much bigger Fenway Park. Game 3 drew 35,520 fans and Fenway, only 2 years old at the time, could easily handle that. Game 4 had 34,365. (The Red Sox may well have kept the concession money as part of the deal.) The Boston Braves swept the Philadelphia Athletics.
Following the surprise success of the 1914 Braves they built a new ballpark on Commonwealth Avenue (locals simply call it Comm Ave) just six blocks from Fenway Park. Braves Field was completed in time for the 1915 World Series and when the Red Sox won the AL pennant the Braves returned the favor and the 1915 home games were played at the new bigger-than-Fenway Braves Field. Game 3 saw 42,300 fans, which Fenway – even today with added Monster and roof seats, could not handle.
In the long run, the Braves didn’t need a park that was bigger than Fenway, Year after year the Red Sox outdrew the Braves by a huge margin…even in 1948 when the Braves went back to the World Series. Late in March 1953, toward the end of spring training, owner Lou Perini decided that he was sick of the Braves being outdrawn something like 5-1 by the Red Sox and moved the team to Milwaukee, where his AAA affiliate played. That was good for a while, as the Milwaukee Braves beat the Yankees in the World Series in 1957, just their fifth year there. By year thirteen, however, the bloom was off the rose and the Braves moved again, this time to Atlanta.
Interesting tidbit #2:
My grandfather Jim Kelley had an older brother, Peter Kelley, who was an Officer and Club Secretary of the Boston Braves from 1910-1912, and from 1916-1918 was the Business Manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was better known, though, as a sportswriter for the Boston Daily Record, Boston Evening American, Boston Journal, Boston Post and Boston Globe.
In December 1907 Fred Tenney was the GM of the Braves. Fred spoke to Peter Kelley and told him he was changing the socks on the Braves’ uniforms from red to blue (they had been wearing red socks since the franchise began as the Boston Red Stockings 36 years earlier). Why the change? He was worried about red dye infection. The Atlanta Braves still wear blue socks.
The next day, Peter, a well-connected guy, spoke to John Taylor, owner of the Boston Globe and the Boston American League team. They had begun play as a charter member of the AL in 1901 and competing sportswriters came up with their own nicknames (Pilgrims, Puritans, Americans, Somersets) but there was no official nickname. Peter told John Taylor about the Braves switching to blue socks and suggested that he have his team wear red socks and call them the Red Sox as an homage to the original team. Taylor loved the idea and announced the change that very afternoon.
In his 1944 obituary in the Boston Globe Peter is crited with coming up with the Red Sox name. There was an MVP award in his name at the Boston Baseball Writers Dinner in the 1940s and 50s, presented by his son, Joe Kelley, my father’s cousin, who also was a sportswriter. For the full writeup on this, check the Huntington Ave Baseball Grounds page.
I never got to a baseball game here because I was only four years old when the Braves left. My father, Hubert Kelley, drove me by and pointed the field out sometime around 1957 after he and cousin Joe had been to the Baseball Writers Dinner. He later took my brother Hugh and me to a Patriots game there in the early 60s. We sat in the former right field bleachers shown above.
Interesting tidbit #3:
My father-in-law, Joe Tierney, was taken there by his father, Ray Tierney, back in 1935 when Babe Ruth was a Boston Brave.
Ruth hit a home run (very possibly it was a foul ball, considering the angle of the Pavilion seats, but never the let the truth get in the way of a good story) that Ray caught on the bounce. He was on the ramp that heads under the stands and held the ball out to Joe and said, “Always keep this baseball. It was hit by the greatest player of all time, Babe Ruth.” Just then some guy came running down the ramp, grabbed the ball from Ray and ran toward the beer concession. Ray ran after the guy, tackled him, got the ball back and went to give it to Joe. “As I was saying, always keep this …” A couple of weeks later Joe supposedly lost the ball playing catch with a friend.
Interesting tidbit #4:
When the NFL was formed the new football teams had no stadiums to play in, so many of them used a baseball park in the same city. Often they chose team names that were similar to the landlord baseball team names. So in Chicago we have the Cubs and the Bears, in Detroit we have the Tigers and Lions, in New York had the Giants and the Giants. That, by the way, is why you still hear announcers and sportswriters refer to the “New York Football Giants.” It’s because the New York Giants baseball team preceded them by several decades. Even though they left for San Francisco 62 years ago you still hear the New York Football Giants references.
The original NFL team in Boston played at Braves Field, so they got clever and named the football team the Boston Braves, the same as the baseball team. But after one year the owner, George Preston Marshall, decided to move to Fenway Park because it was more conducive to football (sort of, anyway) and he got a better deal.
One problem though: he had just bought new uniforms with a Native American logo on the sleeve. Thinking it would be weird to be the NFL Boston Braves playing at Fenway Park, he picked a new name that reflected both the landlord Red Sox and had a Native American spin so he wouldn’t have to replace his uniforms. He came up with Redskins (the word racist had been first used in 1902, some 30 years earlier, but had not come into common use yet). Four years later he moved the team to DC.
In 2020, 87 years later, after mounting public pressure to drop an obviously offensive name, owner Dan Snyder finally succumbed and the team name was changed to Washington Football Team.
What happened to Braves Field?
It’s still there, partially. The field is now owned by Boston University and known as Nickerson Field. It’s the home field for BU soccer and lacrosse. The USFL Boston Breakers played there in the early 80s, but the league folded when Donald Trump, owner of the USFL New Jersey Generals, sued the NFL and won a $1 judgment that bankrupted the USFL. In the late 90s the Boston Breakers Women’s soccer team played there prior to that league folding. BU Commencement is also held there. The field is easily spotted from the Mass Pike.
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