Braves were once called "the Red Sox"??

[Brownieand45sfan]

In this sourced story from the San Diego Union, it says that the Braves were the Red Stockings up until 1907 when they changed their name to Doves.

Americans, Puritans, Pilgrims and Somersets were among the nicknames for the Boston franchise in its first few years. In 1907, Boston's NL franchise changed its colors from red to blue and its name from Red Stockings to Doves. The AL club quickly adopted red for its uniforms and became the Red Sox.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050620/news_lz1s20major.html

Obviously Beaneaters must have been used too up til '07. But was Red Sox an alternative name, used perhaps for headline purposes (shorter than Beaneaters)?

I noticed that the Boston Nationals wore Red Sox* for quite a while after the Boston Americans had changed their name to Red Sox (1908 see http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BOS/1908.shtml). Must have been confusing dfor the home town fans. Especially when the Braves played the 1914 WS in Fenway and Bostonians saw a team out there with partially red stockings and more red on their uniform than blue.


* http://exhibits.baseballhalloffame.org/dressed_to_the_nines/uniforms.asp?league=NL&city=Boston&lowYear=1910&highYear=1919&sort=year&increment=9

[efin98]

It was newspaper shortening, the same way that the Reds and Mets got their nicknames cut down from "Red Stockings" and "Metropolitans". If the Cincinnati team hadn't been formed the Boston team may not have dropped the Red Stockings name in favor of Beaneaters and the the American League team would have had to go with a different name...

The national league team tried name changes as a way to change their luck, it did not work. Once the 1914 team came about the team had been using "Braves" for three years with the "Red Sox" officially being used for eight years so there really was no confussion- especially not with a big "Brave" on the sleeve of the Braves and "RED SOX" across the chest of the Red SOx.

[aqib]

If I recall correctly at one point the Red Sox were called the Braves.

[efin98]

If I recall correctly at one point the Red Sox were called the Braves.

No.

The Red Sox were nicknamed unofficially the Beaneaters, Plymouth Rocks(disputed), Collinsites, Somersets, Americans, Bostonians, Boston Americans- but never Braves.

For what it's worth, a football team had that name(now Washington Redskins), a rugby team, and a hockey team had that name(1971-74, rights held until 1987)