The 1963 Milwaukee Braves season was the 11th in Milwaukee and the 93rd overall season of the franchise.
The sixth-place Braves finished the season with an record, fifteen games behind the National League and World Series champion The season's home attendance was ninth in the ten-team National League. This was the first season that the players last names appeared on the jerseys.
On November 16, 1962, the 17-year tenure of Louis Perini as owner of the Braves ended when the Boston construction magnate sold the team to a Chicago-based group of investors led by The Braves' home attendance had been declining since its 1957 high-water mark of over 2.2 million fans to 767,000 in five short years, due to a drop-off in on-field success since its last postseason appearance (the 1959 NL playoff) and a ban on "bringing your own" food and beer to County Stadium. Within two years of buying the Braves, the Bartholomay group would be negotiating with Atlanta, in a successful bid to move the club to the Southeast as early as 1965.
The change in owners overshadowed the Braves' continued turbulence in the managerial chair. On October 5, 1962, Birdie Tebbetts, in office for only 13 months, resigned to join the in the His successor, Bobby Bragan, 45, was the team's fourth manager in He had been a coach with the expansion in 1962 and had previously been fired from managing posts with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1956âÂÂ1957) and the Indians (1958).
In a 1976 memoir, longtime Dodger executive Harold Parrott would claim that the Braves' hiring of Bragan after the 1962 season was orchestrated by Branch Rickey to thwart a plan by Dodger owner Walter O'Malley to replace his manager, eventual Hall of Famer Walter Alston, with Leo Durocher. O'Malley was strongly considering firing Alston, but only if he could find a suitable "soft landing spot" for him. He chose the Braves, looking to replace Tebbetts, as Alston's ideal destination. But, according to Parrott, RickeyâÂÂin semi-retirement but still O'Malley's bitter enemyâÂÂdiscovered the scheme and brokered the marriage between Bragan and the Braves' ownership before O'Malley's plan could materialize. Bragan served as the Braves' last manager in Milwaukee in 1965, and their first in Atlanta in 1966, although he was fired on August 9 of after guiding the team to an overall record of in over seasons.
Note: Pos = Position; G = Games played; AB = At bats; H = Hits; Avg. = Batting average; HR = Home runs; RBI = Runs batted in
Note: G = Games played; AB = At bats; H = Hits; Avg. = Batting average; HR = Home runs; RBI = Runs batted in
Note: G = Games pitched; IP = Innings pitched; W = Wins; L = Losses; ERA = Earned run average; SO = Strikeouts
Note: G = Games pitched; IP = Innings pitched; W = Wins; L = Losses; ERA = Earned run average; SO = Strikeouts
Note: G = Games pitched; W = Wins; L = Losses; SV = Saves; ERA = Earned run average; SO = Strikeouts
<small>LEAGUE CHAMPIONS: Yakima, Greenville</small>