Q: Wasn’t there a Braves fan who went to a bunch of their games for many years? I think I remember reading something about her at some point. Who was she and is she still going to the games?
A: Pearl Sandow witnessed them all from her seat at old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.
Loss after loss, futile season after futile season as the Braves — for the most part — struggled as a franchise during the 1970s and ’80s.
This gem of a fan attended 1,889 consecutive home games, every one of them from the franchise’s first game in Atlanta in 1966 — the year the Braves moved from Milwaukee — to the last one in 1989.
The streak came to an end with the 1990 home opener.
Sandow, who was in her late 80s by then, had broken both shoulders and stayed at home.
She ended up missing every game that season, the AJC later reported, and didn’t attend many others in the years before she died in April 2006. She was 103 by then and had been living at an assisted living home in Canton.
“Pearl never married, so the Braves became her life,” former Braves PR man Bob Hope told the AJC after her death. “She became a part of my family and of a lot of the other office workers and players.
“She would take a bus to the stadium, and often one of the Braves’ office personnel or players or wives would drive her home to her apartment on Piedmont Avenue. She was very special.”
Sandow’s streak actually dates to the days of the Atlanta Crackers, the minor league team that played at Ponce de Leon Park until the Braves moved south.
She bought season tickets in 1936 and missed only one home game in 1961 until the franchise stopped playing in 1965.
A papier mache statue of Sandow is in a fans section of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., with a plaque that describes her devotion to Atlanta baseball.
The AJC interviewed Sandow before the 1990 opener, when she knew her streak would stop. The Braves had finished last in the NL West in 1989 and would do so again that year.
Still, she could sense better days ahead.
“I think the young talent is beginning to jell, ” she said.
The Braves won the division in 1991 to start a run of 14 consecutive playoff appearances that includes Atlanta’s only World Series championship.
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