Joel Alterman's love affair with baseball began innocently that night. He was 9 years old, and his father thought a boy his age needed to know the game.
Joel didn't know a home run from a first down.
But it didn't matter. It was early in the 1954 season, and Ponce de Leon Park was the place to be --- even if you knew nothing about baseball --- because the Atlanta Crackers loved the city and the city loved its baseball team.
William Alterman and his boy sat behind the dugout that night. And when the game was over, they moved to the railing. Perhaps Joel could get a few autographs, his dad thought.
As the players filed by, every one of them stopped to sign their names in Joel's book. Chuck Tanner, the last player off the field, did Joel one better. He spent 20 minutes talking with him.
In that moment, Alterman fell in love. With baseball. With the Atlanta Crackers.
It is a love that has spanned some five decades, that has given birth to a 50th anniversary celebration of the team's 1954 Southern Association championship.
A number of years back, during the 2004 season, the Braves 400 Club honored the team at a luncheon and before the Braves game against the Cincinnati Reds at Turner Field. A magnolia tree was to be dedicated at Turner Field's Monument Grove in memory of Ponce de Leon Park, where the team played. Ten former players, including Frank Torre, Richard Kelly and Ted Laguna, and Myra Mann, widow of Atlanta Crackers owner Earl Mann, were among the invited guests.
"I am so thrilled that someone is doing this, " Mann said at the time. "I'm just sorry that Earl's not here to be there."
Earl Mann died in 1990 at age 85.
"He really loved his ballplayers, " said his widow, "and I think it showed in the way they played."
A team with heart
Perhaps no other game illustrates the Crackers' heart more than the night they were up against the Little Rock Travelers in May 1954, said Atlantan Richard Kelly, a left-handed pitcher for the team.
On that night, the usually successful Crackers were losing 10-0. By the third inning, manager Whitlow Wyatt had used nearly every player on the roster.
Joel Alterman --- now a regular fan in the stands --- watched in dismay.
It was getting late, too late to be out on a school night. When his father decided it was time to go home, Joel Alterman was heartbroken.
Joel protested. He knew it looked bad --- but the Crackers never lost.
"Joel, nobody ever wins a game when they're losing 10-nothing, " his father told him. "Get in the car."
When Joel arrived from school the next day, the newspaper was on the front stoop.
"Crackers win 11-10, " the headline blared. "Chuck Tanner hits winning home run."
Over the past 50 years, Alterman, now 59, has told that story 100 times. Kelly, too. Seated at a kitchen table in Alterman's home recently, they told it yet again.
The Southern Association disbanded seven years later, in 1961, Kelly said, but the Crackers went down in history as champions, winning more pennants --- 17 in all --- than any other team in organized baseball history except the New York Yankees.
If Tanner was the reason Joel Alterman fell in love with baseball, it was this 1954 win that led him to petition the Braves to honor his favorite team on Tuesday.
Early this year, Alterman said he woke up one morning, and it hit him that 2004 marked the Crackers' 50th anniversary of that season.
"Somebody ought to do something, " he said to himself.
In the next moment, Alterman walked by a mirror in his home. His image stared back at him.
"I said, 'Maybe that's who ought to do it.' "
Support for a celebration
Alterman knew he was the guy, but he had more questions than answers.
How are you going to find them? Who's going to pay to fly them into town? What will you do when you get them here?
Within five minutes, he had his answer: the Atlanta Braves.
"If you can find these people, we'll you do an event, " they told him.
Alterman spent the next two months tracing leads, talking to everybody he thought knew somebody who might know a Cracker and his whereabouts.
In the end, he was able to locate 30 of the players, half of whom are dead now.
Tanner, Alterman's hero, was not able to attend.
But in addition to Kelly, Laguna and Torre, organizers were able to reach Bill George, and Herb Grissom, Earl Hersh and Mel Himes, Virgil Jester, Glenn Thompson and Lloyd Gearhart's widow, Penny.
It was to be the first time they'd seen one another, Kelly said, in 50 years.
Kelly said he's grateful to the Braves for getting behind the celebration and Alterman for instigating it.
"I can't wait to see these guys, " said Kelly, who then was 75.
Laguna, a former catcher living in New Jersey, said at age 72 you don't care much for looking back at yesterday, but this is special.
"As far as I'm concerned, the Braves didn't have to pay, " he said.
"I would've paid my own way to get down there. This is a big thrill for an old guy."
Originally published Sept. 20, 2004
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