To my children’s generation, the word “cracker” means a racial slur directed toward white people, a Saltine or Ritz, but to older folks, it has far different meaning. The word can conjure sweet memories which do not include race or peanut butter. As the Atlanta Braves celebrate 50 years in this city, we should also celebrate their far more successful predecessors the Atlanta Crackers. Growing up in Georgia and as the son of a baseball loving father, I heard many stories about the Crackers related to me from his youth long before cable television or satellite radio broadcasted every baseball game. I can envision my dad, who is quite a “book-worm,” as a young boy sitting and gluttonously devouring every line of text and every number in a box…show more content… Other familiar names which began their careers as Crackers include, Ralph “Country” Brown, Tim McCarver, Ollie O’Mara, Paul Richards, Tommie Aaron, Chuck Tanner and legendary play by play announcer Ernie Harwell who was traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers for catcher Cliff Dabber. It remains the only time in the history of baseball that an announcer was traded for a player. Atlanta’s minor league team had no affiliation with any MLB team as part of a farm system until 1950. Before then, the team had been owned by the city itself, the Georgia Power Company, the Coca-Cola Company or Georgia farm boy turned tycoon Earl Mann. Mann’s ashes were scattered under the famed Magnolia tree in 1990. The post 1950 teams became double-A or triple-A affiliates of the Braves, Dodgers, Cardinals and Twins. Many theories on the origin of the Cracker’s team name exist today, but nobody can provide a definitive answer as to whence came the colorful name. Possible origins of the name include a shortened version of the “Atlanta Firecrackers” which was the name of an 1892 minor league team, a reference to poor white southerners, quick and efficient workers, plowboys who cracked a whip over draft animals, flamboyant entertainers (as in “ that kid is a crackerjack”), or the “crack” of a bat striking a