Braves Big Bats Mathews, Torre & Aaron Are Ready For 1965 Season
HEAVY LUMBER MEN
West Palm Beach, Fla., Mar. 5 – Milwaukee Braves hard hitting trio reported for spring training today. Left to right, Eddie Mathews, Joe Torre and Hank Aaron. (AP Wirephoto March 5, 1965)
Spring training means a new start. It’s too bad that these three sluggers could not change the Milwaukee Braves overall fate for 1965. In 1966, the Braves would be in a new city.
Though Aaron and Mathews led the team with 32 homers apiece and Torre slugged out 27 home runs, the Braves still finished in fifth place out of ten teams in the National League with an 86-76 record in 1965.
After moving from Boston to Milwaukee in 1953 the Braves played the next 13 seasons in the Cream City.
Previously playing in Boston from 1876-1952, the team passed the one million attendance mark only three times.
In Milwaukee the fans were rabid for a major league franchise, and in their debut season of 1953 had 1,826,397 fans pass through their turnstiles.
The Milwaukee Braves would draw over two million fans for four consecutive seasons between 1954 and 1957, culminating with a World Series championship in 1957.
In the succeeding seasons attendance began to steadily decline.
The upshot was that Braves fans already knew that 1965 would be the team’s final season playing in Milwaukee before relocating to Atlanta in 1966. The National League had voted to allow the Braves to move, in the best interests of baseball, after their lease with Milwaukee County Stadium expired at the conclusion of the 1965 season.
Fans stayed away, boycotting Braves games, and their 1965 home attendance was a woeful 555,584.
Major League Baseball returned to Milwaukee with the Brewers in 1970 when the expansion Seattle Pilots moved after just one season. The Milwaukee Brewers later shifted from the American to the National League in 1998.
Henry Aaron who had played his entire career with the Braves, came back to Milwaukee in a November 1974 trade to play his final two seasons with the Brewers.
