Oh Yeah, Baseball

The creation of the Boston Red Stockings baseball team in 1871 cost $15,000, roughly the amount today’s Major Leaguers pay for a pair of spikes. In 1916 a new owner paid $500,000 for the organization. The Red Stockings became the Beaneaters (really) and then the Braves, moving to Milwaukee and,...

By Greg Baker

May 4, 2006

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The creation of the Boston Red Stockings baseball team in 1871 cost $15,000, roughly the amount today’s Major Leaguers pay for a pair of spikes. In 1916 a new owner paid $500,000 for the organization. The Red Stockings became the Beaneaters (really) and then the Braves, moving to Milwaukee and, in 1966, to Atlanta. That makes the Braves (by any given name) the oldest continuously operating professional sports franchise in America. The team’s first superstar, Mike “King” Kelly — called the “Babe Ruth of the Nineteenth Century” — drew a shocking and unheard-of $10,000 annual salary. Jim Thorpe, Rogers Hornsby, and even Babe Ruth did time with the Braves. Of course we regress. Today’s Braves are trying to hang at .500, and the Marlins are, um, the Marlins.
Tue., May 9, 7:05 p.m.

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