Best 50 — 1957 Milwaukee Braves (#26)
Henry Aaron’s mighty blow leads Milwaukee to its first championship
Successive editions of this newsletter are counting down the 50 greatest ballclubs of all time — a/k/a the Best 50 — as ranked by my new book, Baseball’s Best (and Worst) Teams. Today’s entry focuses on No. 26, the 1957 Milwaukee Braves.
Here’s a quick boilerplate explanation that I’m appending to every story in this series:
I compiled the Best 50 by analyzing 2,544 major-league teams from 1903 to 2024. Those clubs have been ranked by their team scores (TS), which are plotted on a 100-point scale. (A given club’s all-time percentile is the percentage of the other 2,543 teams that it outperformed.)
See my book for an explanation of my TS calculations. The book also offers separate breakdowns of the best and worst clubs for every decade and franchise, comprehensive profiles of the Best 50 (including position-by-position lineups and much more information than you’ll find in this newsletter), and similar summaries of the 10 worst teams of all time.
Now on to today’s profile.
Facts and figures
Team: 1957 Milwaukee Braves
Team score: 87.001 points
All-time rank: 26 of 2,544
All-time percentile: 99.02%
Season record: 95-59 (.617)
Season position: First place in National League
Final status: World champion
Season summary
The Braves were hemorrhaging cash in 1952, not that many Bostonians cared. Only 281,000 spectators wandered into Braves Field that year, a disastrously low total that caused owner Lou Perini to shift his club to Milwaukee. It was the first relocation of a major-league franchise in 50 years.
Perini was stunned by the massive crowd that turned out for his team’s welcoming parade in 1953. “This is just out of the world,” he exclaimed to Frederick Miller, the president of a Milwaukee brewery. Miller responded, “This could be the beginning of a championship.”
He was right. Milwaukee led the majors in attendance every season from 1953 through 1958, and the players responded. The Braves finished second in the National League in 1953, 1955, and 1956. They finally broke through in 1957, led by a pair of young sluggers, Henry Aaron and Eddie Mathews, and veteran pitcher Warren Spahn.
A 10-game winning streak in August shot the Braves into a comfortable lead in the NL. They finished eight games ahead of the second-place St. Louis Cardinals.
Baseball’s Best (and Worst) Teams
Get the complete lowdown on the 50 greatest (and 10 weakest) clubs of all time
Postseason summary
Lew Burdette had unhappy memories of his brief tenure with the New York Yankees. The young prospect was called up from the minors in September 1950, but manager Casey Stengel never learned his name. “He’d yell over, ‘Hey you, get in there and warm up,’” the pitcher recalled.
Burdette got his revenge in the 1957 World Series, defeating Stengel’s Yankees in Games Two, Five, and Seven. His final victory, a 5-0 shutout, brought Milwaukee a world title. Burdette was the first pitcher in 37 years to win three complete games in a series. The Braves’ other hero, Henry Aaron, hit three homers and drove home seven runs.
Burdette immediately started talking about a rematch. “We’d like to play them again next year,” he told reporters. “I’m sure we’re going to win the pennant, but I’m not sure about them.”
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Lineup summary
Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home-run record in 1974, yet he always insisted that the most exciting moment of his career had occurred 17 years earlier. Aaron clinched Milwaukee’s first National League pennant with a walk-off homer on September 23, 1957. “I’ve never had another feeling like that,” he said. His blast inspired Time magazine to quote Exodus 8:17: “For Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and smote the dust of the earth.”
The 23-year-old outfielder topped the league in home runs (44) and runs batted in (132), locking up the NL’s Most Valuable Player Award. Third baseman Eddie Mathews, himself only 25, ranked second on the club with 32 homers and 94 RBIs. Mathews would become the only Braves player to take the field in all three of the franchise’s home cities: Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta.
Red Schoendienst batted .310 after being acquired from the New York Giants in mid-June. The second baseman led the league with 200 hits (122 for the Braves), but his 13 seasons of big-league experience proved to be equally important for Milwaukee’s young squad. “He definitely became the leader of that ballclub,” said Aaron.
Another key veteran was 36-year-old pitcher Warren Spahn, who had already notched at least 20 victories in seven seasons. He made it eight in 1957 with a 21-11 record. Spahn easily won the Cy Young Award, a prize then given to only one pitcher in both major leagues.