Atlanta Bravest? Q&A With Fan Club 'Reimagining Atlanta Baseball'

SI on Braves sat down for a joint interview with two brothers campaigning to change the Atlanta Braves nickname and brand.

Courtesy of Buccafusco Brothers

It's been 85 years since the Atlanta Braves had a different nickname. That was more than two decades before the team moved to Atlanta.

But over the past 30 years, there's been a big push for high school, college and professional sports teams nicknamed for Native American groups to change their logos and names. Most notably, the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians are now nicknamed the Commanders and Guardians, respectively.

Two brothers, who are lifelong Braves fans, are pushing for Atlanta's baseball team to change its branding, including the nickname, too.

Marty and Chris Buccafusco grew up in Augusta, Ga. They repped Braves gear and performed the team's famous tomahawk chop chant along with millions of other fans at Turner Field during the team's dominating 1990s.

But as adults, the Buccafusco brothers began to question their favorite baseball team's nickname. Together, they founded an organization called Bravest ATL, which is campaigning to add a "T" to the end of the team's nickname.

Bravest ATL is also advocating for the team to replace its Native American imagery with firefighter branding.

I received the opportunity to sit down with both Marty and Chris to learn more about their group. Here is what they want the public to know about them (in some cases, the brother's answers were edited for length).

Q: What is Bravest ATL?

Marty: We’re basically a fan club for Atlanta baseball that is focused on trying to change the branding of the baseball team. A part of that also includes recommending this very simple change to the name — adding the T and changing the tomahawk to a firefighter’s axe.

Also, we organize watch parties or in-game, at-the-stadium cheer sections, a lot like Atlanta United has been able to do successfully the last few years. We also try to give back to the first-responder community and send them to baseball games with free tickets that all of our merchandise sales go to support. We want to send firefighters to games, we want to organize Atlanta fans, and also promote a change for the team’s branding.

All of this while watching and loving this baseball team, sometimes to unhealthy degrees.

Q: How did your group form?

Chris: Marty and I have been thinking about these sort of issues for a long time. Back when we both lived in New York City together, we would go to Citi Field and elsewhere. And we had chats with our buddies, including one of our buddies, Paul Lukas, who runs a "Uni Watch", a blog about all of the uniform minutiae, who kind of pushed us to think about what could Atlanta be doing better? What are the options for a name change?

This was an opportunity for us to think about a way in which Atlanta could switch the nickname and do so well. Do so in a way that could be meaningful to the whole community, not just picking kind of a random name that doesn’t matter to anybody. But also sticking with all of the traditions of the team. The traditional color ways, the traditional logos and font — all of the things that make the uniform and all of our relationships with the team for the last, forever long, really valuable to us. This grew out of that, and by 2018 or so, Marty and I decided, ‘Let’s do this.’

Marty: Yeah, instead of just wanting to complain out loud about the branding, let’s actually do something good with it. If we’re going to attract any attention and get anyone on our side and build this coalition, let’s also do something good about it. That was learning a lot more about the Native American community and part of it was learning a lot more about firefighters and reaching out to them and trying to support them as well. We want to do some good with this.

Q: What did you learn by reaching out to those groups?

Chris: We had terrific success with the Native American community. This is obviously an issue that they’ve been involved in for decades. We recall as teenage fans in the 1990s when this was beginning to bubble up during the Atlanta versus Cleveland World Series.

So, those folks in those communities were really excited to meet with us. We’ve gotten team members now who work with us from various tribes, including Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the Cherokee tribe, so we’ve gotten a lot of support from them, from other groups like the 11th Hour Project and Running Strong for American Indian Youth. It’s been really great. They seem really excited about what we’re doing. They like the branding. They like that folks like us care. We’re not Native American. We’re a couple white guys, but we’re long-time fans of the team. They are glad to have us on their side.

Marty: It has been surprising how many allies there are around here, just wanting to join and support this movement. When people around the stadium see the branding, they tell us, “That’s a really great idea.” It’s crazy how easy it is for some people to say, ‘Oh, wow. That is a very simple change.’

Chris and I are traditionalists. I don’t want to speak for Chris, but I don’t need the designated hitter. I don’t need these other changes. I like old TBS, National League baseball. I like old uniforms as well. I like things as classic as can be. So talking about this sometimes with each other and then with other fans, it’s a tough thing to say we have to change the name and brand.

But then we talk about just how many things change, and we’ve gotten over it. We got over leaving Fulton County Stadium and having Turner Field and then we got over losing [Tom] Glavine and accepted him back. Then we got over [Freddie] Freeman leaving and then moving to Cobb County. Things change. We’re trying to get over adding the advertisement patches on sleeves. There are things that you just gotta accept because for baseball, such a traditional pasttime sport, things are constantly changing. And there’s no reason this brand can’t be one of those things that change.

Courtesy of ATL Bravest

Q: A lot of sports fans have argued nicknames such as the Braves honor Native American groups. How do Native American groups feel about these nicknames?

Chris: There are 574 federally recognized Native American tribes in the United States. They are an enormously diverse group of humans who have all sorts of different ideas on everything like all of us do. Many of those people are excited about team names like this. They do, in fact, like them. Many tribes have relationships with teams like Atlanta and Florida State and we obviously think those relationships are great and we support them. This is the sort of thing that should be happening.

The challenge, though, is for lots of Native Americans, and the social science research backs this up, they disproportionally object to Native American branding. They really object to the tomahawk chop. They reject to flat stereotypes that even though in the eyes of the non-Native fanbase are meant to honor them for their bravery and their war-like capacity, they don’t necessarily want to be thought of in only that way. That might be an important aspect of their tradition and their culture, they are also filmmakers and professors and lawyers and surgeons and all of the other things that humans are. And they are modern people that want to be recognized for all of that.

We all learn that in Elementary school that stereotypes are bad. That they flatten people in their cultures and that’s what’s going on here. People suggest this is a way of remembering Native cultures. I don’t think anyone has sat through a baseball game and thought, ‘Boy, I know something important about how Native Americans responded to the COVID pandemic now.’ Or, ‘boy, I learned this important thing about the role of Native Americans in the film industry.’ All they see is tomahawk chopping. All they see is past stereotypes. We don’t think that’s good, and most Native Americans don’t either.

Marty: Adding to that, kids are much more informed about the history of Native Americans and their relationship with the American government. Then, when they show up at the Braves games and they see these caricatures on display, it doesn’t jive with the information that they do know about honoring Native Americans both historically and currently.

There is no one here that doesn’t want to honor the legacy and current contributions of Native Americans. We want to do that. There are ways to do that. The branding on a baseball team and the chanting and the tomahawk don’t seem like the right ways to honor this part of American society.

Q: I’m not sure the team has made this public, but going to games as a fan myself, it does seem like there is less chopping now then there was about 10 years ago. Would phasing out the chop entirely be enough of a change for your group?

Marty: That’s a great first step. I've seen the same thing. The Braves only play the steady drum beat now, and they know that’s a cue for the fans to pick up the chanting and the chopping. The team seems to be at least stepping away from it, but at the same time, not discouraging it. That sort of says to me, there is a recognition of the detrimental effects of it. There is recognition of a little bit of shame. But there’s not the full commitment of trying to eradicate it. 

In 2019, I think it was, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Ryan Helsley said something about the chop happening when he was pitching, saying that it was disrespectful (Helsley is a member of the Cherokee Nation). The team said, ‘Alright, we’ve thought about it, we will not play the chop while he is on the mound.’ The team was supposed to give out foam tomahawks that night, and then they decided not to do that. So there is something that they are aware of that the team definitely acknowledges. 

So, yes, I think ending the chop would be a huge first step. Basically, we’re open to any sort of outcome for this. Any way to sort of remove the tomahawk, remove the chopping, remove the chanting. Remove the things that flatten Native Americans into a stereotype. These are the things that need to go or else you can’t properly move forward as one national organization or one fan base.

To be clear, we want fan engagement. You go to an Atlanta United soccer game, and there is a cheering section that sings and chants the entire match. But it’s all positive. It feels so celebratory of both the game in front of them and the community around them. But that’s the difference with the chop at the Braves games. It’s not an environment that is to celebrate both the atmosphere, the community and the game. 

Chris: There’s also nothing inherently wrong with chopping. One of the brilliant things about the Bravest design is that it would turn the chop into a firefighters chant. It’s a hatchet, and there’s a siren that plays. And who doesn’t get excited about sirens? There’s all sorts of ways to change the branding and still engage the fan base. The chop is a problem when it’s associated with a bunch of stereotypes. It’s not a problem when it celebrates the team and firefighters.

Marty: It's also not about shame. When our first conversations about this started, it wasn't out of being ashamed of the chop. It was about considering the potential negative impact it has on people. Have you considered the impact on the next generation? Have you learned about how Native Americans feel about it? That's one of the best things about our group. It's not about why we should feel bad about chopping. It came as an opportunity to learn.

Chris: Yeah, and it took us some time to learn. The Braves nickname and the chop does sometimes feel like it honors the Native American community. It's not as obviously problematic as the "Redskins" nickname or the Chief Wahoo logo. It required us to engage with more people in the community.

Q: I’d imagine a lot of people accuse your group of being part of cancel culture. What is your response to that criticism?

Chris: We understand that lots of these things have gotten deeply sensitive for people. That a lot has become politicized in our culture and society. But we think there’s always room for respect. This isn’t about canceling anybody. This is not about limiting what people can do. This is an opportunity to share our love for baseball, our respect for firefighters, our respect for Native Americans and move forward.

Name changes like this can feel like losses to people. That change takes something away from the memories of the team. We understand that. We have all of these memories with Atlanta and the franchise back from when we were chopping along in the 90s. But change doesn’t have to be a loss. When Freddie went to the Dodgers, that was a loss. When Ronald [Acuna Jr.} keeps getting injured, that’s a loss. But adding a T to the name is a gain. It’s a gain for the team, it’s a gain for the fans, it’s a gain for the community. It doesn’t have to feel like a loss. It can feel like an exciting path forward for people.

Marty: What we hope is the team makes this decision. The least respectable thing is for the team to be dragged into it sort of kicking and screaming the whole way. What we hope is that the team actually means what it says when it says it wants to honor Native Americans. So, make the step to make the change without sponsorship or advertisement pressure. Be proud of what has been done in the past, and create a new brand that we can all be proud of going forward.

This is also the way things are moving. Two-thirds of Native American branded teams in national, college and high school have changed their nicknames over the last 35 years. We're on the bottom third of this. So, it's coming.

Chris: And to be clear, it they make the new brand Bravest or something else, we don't care. We love Bravest, we think it's great, but we don't really care. We would love for them to support firefighters. But that's not the priority.

We are also not here to make money. We're losing money sending firefigthers to baseball games. We have trademarked Bravest, but we would be more than happy to allow the Atlanta team to use it. Nothing would make us happier.

Marty: And whether they are Bravest or something else, there is still plenty of room to honor Native Americans. There's no reason to stop the acknowledgment of Native Americans at the stadium and the relationships the team has with that community. These things can continue to happen even though they aren't called the Braves.

To learn more about ATL Bravest, readers can join its mailing list at Bravestatl.com.

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