Joyful Georgians celebrating the Atlanta Braves’ historic World Series victory relished the opportunity on Wednesday to share the delight of a championship, while also reflecting on a triumph that was a long time coming.
”Does anybody feel like I do, that it’s a great day to live in Atlanta and in the state of Georgia today?” said Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, who was sporting a Braves cap at the state Capitol as he opened a special legislative session Wednesday morning. House members, who are often at odds on the issues, responded in unified, raucous applause.
“And that wasn’t just a little barely win last night. That was a beat down,” said Ralston, an avid Braves fan. “It made it even better.”
After 18 months of a deadly pandemic, more than a year of intense political divisions, and a generation since the Braves’ last World Championship, Atlantans and Georgians found themselves focused on a truly happy reality Wednesday morning: We won.
Fans were already scurrying to find memorabilia and making plans to duck out of work or school for Friday’s victory parade. Many were reflecting on where they were the last time the Braves won it all, or imaging how much-loved family members or friends would have reacted to this victory. The memory of Hank Aaron, who died this year at age 86, was on many minds as the Braves players raced around the diamond at Minute Maid Park in Houston to embrace one another after the final out.
The Braves had been honoring Aaron all season with a giant #44, Aaron’s number, painted on the field at Truist Park.
“The anchor, the foundation for this is number 44,” said DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond. “The spirit and the legacy of Hank Aaron loomed large over this World Series and I think that had a unifying effect, not just for the Braves, who overcame so many obstacles. But it helped to rally Atlanta at a critical moment.”
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Attempts to politicize the World Series and the Braves didn’t gain traction, Thurmond said, and the team’s ability to win a championship after struggling with injuries and losses offered inspiration to everyone. “You can have a comeback, you can rise from the ashes of defeat and claim victory. That’s the lesson.”
The city seemed transfixed by the game, to the point that the events in Houston eclipsed political events surrounding Tuesday’s busy election day. TV sets were turned to the Braves game at election night parties. In a city struggling to control violent crime, Atlanta’s streets were relatively quiet Tuesday night. Everyone, it seemed, was focused on baseball.
“The Braves belong to all of us,” said Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. She rejected talk of a “curse” that has prevented Atlanta sports teams from prevailing in championships. “I am declaring that the curse is officially broken and we are World Champions!”
Bottoms said she was looking forward to Friday’s celebratory parade and admitted that she had jumped a barricade in 1991 during a parade held in Downtown Atlanta when the Braves made it to the World Series, even though the team didn’t win. “I’m going to try and be a little less disruptive for this parade but I’m excited.”
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Ambassador Andrew Young, a former Atlanta mayor, said he imagined the Braves in the World Series when he was trying to convince Major League Baseball to keep the All-Star game in Atlanta this year. He recalls saying, “If they won’t put the All-Star game here, we’re just going to have to bring the World Series here.” Young said the win would boost the city in the same way that Hank Aaron’s success and the Olympics raised the city’s profile. “This is another big event,” he said Wednesday.
Everyone from tired school kids witnessing their first Braves championship to elders who had seen it before either paused to mark the moment or spent all morning dissecting the details of the 7-0 shutout.
Long-time Braves uber-fans, former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn, tweeted out a message to the Braves, saying, “We are thrilled to congratulate our beloved hometown #AtlantaBraves for winning their 3rd World Series in our lifetime!”
Jason Carter, a former state senator and the grandson of the former president, said this World Series win was especially valuable. “You’ve got a bunch of divisive politics right now in our world. You have got a lot of talk about the things that divide us, and this is something that undeniably brings us together,” he said. Families, including the Carter family, are enjoying this moment of sharing something fun and positive after a tough period of the pandemic, Jason Carter said. “It’s been a huge, huge bright spot.”
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Fans across Atlanta kept coming back to the point that the Braves win pushed Atlanta sports into a new era.
“You know that narrative of Atlanta always being the bridesmaid? We killed that narrative today for the team and for the city for decades to come,” said Matteen Zibanejadrad, 25, of Roswell, after the historic win.
Zibanejadrad was 7 months in the womb when the Braves last won the title but has been a life-long fan. The season started with him thinking they might finish as division champions again but get no further. “It’s unbelievable that we are here now. What makes this so sweet is that it has changed the story of this city and this team.”
Brent Davenport, 40, from Acworth said he was a kid in 1991 when the Braves began an ascent to the 1995 World Series win, and it has been a long wait for a return.
“Probably for me, it’s different than a lot of these younger people,” he said of the win. “I know how hard it is to get here.”
Atlantan Susanna Roberts and her husband Keith flew to Houston to see the game in person. Even near the end of the game, with the Braves up 7-0, Roberts said she was biting her nails, fearing that something would go wrong. She said it was hard to describe the emotion at the last out, with the Braves victorious.
This Braves team, she said, is filled with great people who are also great athletes. “It feels like the good guys won.”
Ralston, the Georgia House Speak and a lifelong Braves fan, said the win was emotional. He hugged his son Matt, who is too young to remember the last World Series win.
The win, Ralston said, will unite Georgians in ways other sports victories might now. ”Baseball brings people together. It’s trite to say it’s our national pastime but it’s our great unifier. And for those of us in the South who have college football as a religion, it’s designed to divide us in a spirited way,” he said. “With baseball, the entire state was pulling for the Braves. We needed it and we got it. . . . For a kid that grew up listening to baseball on a transistor radio and only caught one game a week on TV, it was an unforgettable moment.”
AJC staff writers Greg Bluestein, Ernie Suggs, Christopher Quinn, Johnny Edwards and J.D. Capelouto contributed to this report.
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