Remembering the Crackers

By Bruce Kennedy

Atlanta, Ga. – This month Atlanta celebrates its long baseball tradition with festivities in Piedmont Park, the first home of the city's famed Atlanta Crackers minor league franchise.

Tim Darnell, author of the soon-to-be-published book, The Crackers: Early Days of Atlanta Baseball , talked with WABE's Bruce Kennedy about the team.

TIM DARNELL: The Crackers were one of the most successful minor league professional baseball teams in organized baseball history. As a matter of fact from 1901, their very first year of operation, to 1965 when the franchise folded, they were the most successful minor league team and really the most successful professional baseball team in all of the organized game itself - with the exception of one other franchise, the New York Yankees. They won more league championships and pennants over that 64-year period of time than any other team in professional baseball, except the Yankees of New York.

WABE: Can you tell us about their early days? We're coming up on the centennial of the Crackers. What was it like in 1903?

TIM DARNELL: Players traveled by train, or by bus, most of the time. And some even came by horseback or by cart. The Atlanta Crackers were part of the Southern Association, which was one of the successful and most stable minor leagues in all of professional organized baseball. They were wore very heavy flannel uniforms, their catchers' gloves were very small and thin, the rules of the game were pretty much what they are today. But around the turn of the century baseball was really beginning to capture the South's imagination, and the imagination of the entire country.

WABE: What was it about the Crackers that gave them such stature, that made them a winning team?

TIM DARNELL: I believe that not only was it the stability of the Southern Association, but the stability of the ownership. From year to year, the Crackers were sometimes owned by the Georgia Railway and Electric Company, now known as the Georgia Power Company. In the 1920 and 1930s and early 40s they were owned by another Atlanta institution, the Coca Cola Company. There is a gentleman named Earl Mann, who became the General Manager of the Crackers in 1933. And from 1933 to 47 he was simply the general manager. He became the owner in 1948, and owned the team outright until 1959. Earl Mann was known as the baseball genius from Dixie, he was also known as Mr. Atlanta Baseball. So he was one of the most shrewd, astute and generous minor league operators of the 20th century.

WABE: Can you tell us about some of the Crackers who went on to greater fame in the majors?

TIM DARNELL: Well, of course, there are only two Atlanta Crackers who went on to Cooperstown - they being Luke Appling and Eddie Matthews. Eddie Matthews is the only player to ever play for the Atlanta Crackers, the Boston Braves, the Milwaukee Braves and the Atlanta Braves. So he has a very long history here, in metro Atlanta sports history. You have Chuck Tanner, who came here in the early 1950s, who went on to be the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates - world champions in the late 1970s - and came back to Atlanta to manage the Braves in some portion of the 80s. Outside of that, I could say the most memorable ex-Atlanta Cracker, who went on to a lot of fame and notoriety, was a catcher who came in 1962. In 1962 the Crackers were a Triple-A affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals - and their catcher was a young teenager named Tim McCarver, who went on to broadcast fame as well.

WABE: Tell us a bit about the Negro League equivalent to the Crackers.

TIM DARNELL: The Atlanta Black Crackers were born in 1919. They were actually a version of a semi-pro team, previous to them, called the Atlanta Cubs. Simply, the Atlanta Cubs joined the Negro Southern League in 1919 and 1920 and adopted the name the Atlanta Black Crackers - because that's what everyone called them, similar to the Birmingham Black Barons or the Memphis Black Red Socks. The Atlanta Black Crackers were one of the greatest Negro Southern League teams ever. They had several players who, arguably, could have made it to major leagues. Ironically, the destruction of the color barrier in the 1940s signaled the end of black baseball, - not only in the South, but also throughout the nation. It's very arguable that, in 1938, the Atlanta Black Crackers could have become the champions of all of black organized baseball - except for a dispute which arose between the Memphis Red Socks and the Homestead Grays and the Atlanta Crackers, who were all in a play-off series for the champions of the Negro American League.

WABE: Ponce Park was home to one of the first integrated sporting events in the United States, right?

TIM DARNELL: That's correct. Not only that but one of the first integrated - the first very first integrated sports event in Atlanta history. In 1949, April 10th through the 13th, 1949, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and the Brooklyn Dodgers came through to play a three-game exhibition series with the Crackers at Ponce De Leon ballpark. The crowd on the final game, 23,221 people, was the largest crowd to ever witness a baseball game at Ponce De Leon ballpark. The Crackers won one of those three games. But that was the first time that blacks and whites had ever competed against each other, in a professional sporting environment, in the history of Atlanta.

WABE: And what was the reaction like, to that series?

TIM DARNELL: As I said, the final game on April 13th drew an all-time Ponce De Leon ballpark crowd. There were no demonstrations. The Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan did make several telephone threats to Earl Mann - threatening him with his life, if the games ever did come off. On one particular occasion the Grand Dragon had the very unfortunate luck of calling Earl Mann at home - when the City of Atlanta police chief, Herbert Jenkins, happened to be sitting in Mann's living room. Earl Mann handed the telephone to him and said, Why don't you repeat what you just said to the chief of the Atlanta police? And they never heard from the Grand Dragon ever again.

WABE: How do you think that Atlanta should remember the Crackers?

TIM DARNELL: So many people today are bored, and take for granted the winning seasons of the Atlanta Braves, which have been champions for over a decade. Atlanta natives, like myself, remember some very bad baseball around the 60s, 70s and 80s. But really, Atlanta's baseball tradition - our winning tradition - goes all the way back to 1866 and forward, when the very first baseball game was played in Atlanta. All the way up to 1965, Atlanta has a rich baseball tradition. And in an age where players simply play the game to build a bottomless financial reservoir, the Atlanta Crackers and the Atlanta Black Crackers and all of the players and the owners of the old Southern Association truly played the game of baseball the way it was meant to be played.