By Mike Christensen
The Mississippi Braves are history. They played their last game on Sept. 15, a rather unceremonious loss on the road in Biloxi. Atlanta’s Double-A franchise now calls Georgia home. The team is now the — ugh — Columbus Clingstones. The M-Braves are no more.
But make no mistake: Memories of the M-Braves will endure. Anytime you watch a big league game, or an MLB highlight show, or glance at the box scores, you’ll see a familiar name or two or three. Since 2005, the M-Braves’ first season at Pearl’s Trustmark Park, they have sent 177 players to the major leagues. And that number will grow as more players from the last couple years reach The Show.
Former M-Braves are everywhere, and not just in Atlanta, where Ozzie Albies, Michael Harris, Max Fried, Charlie Morton and Spencer Schwellenbach currently star. In Los Angeles, there’s Freddie Freeman and Evan Phillips with the Dodgers. In Houston, Jason Heyward. In Milwaukee, William Contreras. In Chicago, Dansby Swanson and Christian Bethancourt with the Cubs and Jared Shuster with the White Sox. In Oakland, Shea Langeliers and Kyle Muller. In Baltimore, Jacob Webb. In Boston, Vaughn Grissom and Lucas Sims. In Detroit, Justyn-Henry Malloy. In Seattle, Dylan Moore. In Pittsburgh, Joey Wentz. In Miami, Cristian Pache.
There is documented star power among M-Braves alums. Ronald Acuna Jr. was the National League MVP in 2023, and Freeman won it in 2020. Three former M-Braves have won the National League Rookie of the Year Award: Craig Kimbrel, Acuna and Harris. Just last year, four M-Braves alumni were on the All-MLB first team: Acuna, Freeman, Austin Riley and Spencer Strider. Swanson has won a Gold Glove at shortstop the last two seasons. Current Atlanta manager Brian Snitker, skipper of the first M-Braves team in 2005, won the NL manager of the year honor in 2018. Brian McCann, one of the M-Braves’ first stars, was an All-Star Game MVP in 2010.
Who can forget what McCann did at Trustmark Park on April 30, 2005? The 21-year-old catching prospect, just weeks from his first big league call-up, stepped to the plate in the bottom of the ninth with his team down 1-0, two outs and a runner on. The M-Braves did not have a hit to that point. McCann smacked a fastball high and deep over the right-field wall for a jaw-dropping 2-1 victory. “I’ve never had a feeling like that as long as I’ve been playing sports,” he said afterward.
For Braves fans, it was one for the memory banks, among the first of many, many highlights the team produced over its 19 seasons.
Drift back to May 15 of this season: Touted prospects Hurston Waldrep and Schwellenbach combined to throw 14 innings, allowing just one run on nine hits and a walk while striking out 17 batters in a doubleheader sweep of Biloxi. An unforgettable night for those fans who were there. Both made the big leagues shortly thereafter.
Devoted M-Braves fans — and apparently there weren’t enough of them — will surely remember the team’s five no-hitters; the Chipper Jones rehab games; Acuna’s first-pitch home run in his Double-A debut; the double-steal to win the ’08 pennant; Drew Lugbauer’s three-homer game; the Heyward-Freeman July 4 debut; Evan Gattis’ monstrous home run in the Atlanta Braves exhibition game; Justin Dean’s ninth-inning catch in the ’21 championship clincher; Jason Perry’s homer over the batter’s eye.
A bunch of Mississippi prep products took the field for the local nine over the years. That list includes Riley, Zack Bird, Jay Powell, Michael Rosamond, Van Pope, Brent Leach and, in 2024, Brandon Parker and Landon Harper.
The M-Braves’ legacy includes two league championships (2008 and 2021) and four major individual award winners. Drew Waters was the Southern League’s player of the year in 2019, Todd Redmond the pitcher of the year in 2008, and Phillip Wellman and Dan Meyer took top manager honors in the championship seasons.
Memories bring back memories, as the song goes. In the mind’s eye of the team’s longtime fans, Jeff Francoeur is making a great throw from right field; Kimbrel is pumping a high-octane fastball; Andrelton Simmons is ranging into the hole at shortstop to start a double play; Matt Young is swiping second base; Brandon Jones is hitting a rope to the opposite field; Langeliers is cutting down a would-be base-stealer; Lugbauer is crushing a ball into the Farm Bureau Grill.
For the more than 3 million who passed through the gates of Trustmark Park over the years, all that’s left of the M-Braves are memories like those. A new team — an independent franchise not affiliated with an MLB club — is coming to Pearl in 2025. That’s a good thing. But, as Braves fans know, it won’t be the same as what went before.
