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The Wichita
Braves were a Class AAA minor league baseball franchise based in
Wichita, Kansas, that played in the American Association during
the 1956-57-58 seasons as a top affiliate of the then-dominant Milwaukee
Braves of the National League.
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In
effect, the Wichita Braves were the successor of the Milwaukee
Brewers, the Braves' predecessors in the Beer City. When
the major-league Braves shifted from Boston to Milwaukee
in March of 1953, they displaced their highly successful
AAA affiliate, the Brewers. With Toledo, Ohio, without baseball
(the original Toledo Mud Hens had pulled up stakes for Charleston,
West Virginia, on June 23, 1952), the Brewers moved to Toledo
and played three seasons there. But attendance fell by 50
percent — from 344,000 to 156,000 — during those
three years, and the Braves moved the club to Wichita for
the 1956 season. They displaced a Class A Western League
franchise and affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles —
ironically called the Wichita Indians. |
While the parent Milwaukee club was
setting attendance marks and winning two NL pennants in three years
(missing the 1956 flag by only a single game), the Toledo-Wichita
minor league transfer was a flop. Attendance for the Wichita Braves
fell by another 50 percent over Toledo's gate, to 101,000, for 1956,
as the team finished below .500. It climbed to 145,000 fans for
a pennant-winning Wichita team in '57, managed by legendary minor
league manager Ben Geraghty. But when the W-Braves fell to second
place the following year, attendance dropped to 1956 levels. The
Braves then moved their AAA affiliation to the Louisville Colonels,
and the Wichita franchise transferred to Fort Worth, Texas, for
1959 as the American Association reorganized.
Professional baseball returned to
Wichita when the Wichita Aeros joined the American Association as
an expansion franchise in 1970. |
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