Change the Atlanta Braves name? NC fan and brother have their idea down to a T.
Love for the Atlanta Braves runs so deeply through Chris Buccafusco that as a 12-year-old boy, he and his younger brother Marty built an 8-foot tomahawk in their front yard — a plywood monument to their baseball heroes.
Even as an adult, Buccafusco tears up recalling his dad waking him up late on a school night to watch the last inning of the 1992 playoffs, when catcher Sid Bream famously won the game with a slide into home plate.
And as a law professor at Duke University, Buccafusco’s fandom still borders on obsession now that he and his brother have launched an idea aimed at changing their beloved team’s name and stopping its controversial tomahawk chop:
Add a single letter, changing Braves to Bravest.
Make the tomahawk logo into a firefighter’s ax.
“This is my team,” said Buccafusco from Durham. “I’ve loved this team virtually my whole life. I will love it no matter who they become. ... For the next generation of fans, I would love to have them not look back at their experience with just a tinge of sadness and disappointment that my brother and I feel.”
Drop the chop
For decades, Native American groups have criticized the Braves for both appropriating and demeaning their culture, from the long-retired mascot Chief Noc-a-Homa to the fans’ continued use of foam tomahawks to “chop” at opponents while chanting in the stands.
The Braves formed a partnership with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in 2000, hosting dancers and tribal leaders on the field during one game each season. The team continues to “honor, respect and value the Native American community,” says a statement on its webpage. “The culture and history of Native Americans have a monumental impact not just on the Atlanta Braves, but our state, region and the entire country.”
But calls to abandon the symbols continue, especially after both the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians dropped their native imagery.
In 2019, the Braves opted against handing out foam tomahawks or playing the team’s chant music during a playoff game with the St. Louis Cardinals after pitcher Ryan Helsley, a Cherokee, called it a misrepresentation of Native Americans “in this kind of caveman-type people way,” according to The New York Times.
For Buccafusco and his brother Marty, now a creative director in Atlanta, the controversy began to seep into their fandom at around college age — an awareness that coincided with rising debate over their native Georgia’s then-Confederate flag.
Once his brother had children, and the Braves tradition started getting passed, they second-guessed their own participation in the team’s branding. It felt like passing on disrespectful stereotypes.
“You begin to realize the power of symbols,” Buccafusco said from Durham, “how things meant to bring us together might actually be divisive. We had already stopped chopping years before that.”
The Atlanta Bravest?
As the brothers thought of what Braves’ fans could get behind, the firefighter theme emerged, now packaged online as Bravest ATL.
With an ax instead of a tomahawk, the team’s symbol could represent all first-responders — not just firefighters but police and nurses, too.
“Everybody loves first-responders with good reason,” Buccafusco said. “That’s the sort of thing Atlanta baseball should be celebrating.”
With the team renamed Bravest, the familiar logos and colors could remain with just one extra letter added.
“This is not asking people to radically rebrand and start caring about Commanders or Guardians,” he said. “We think we’ve given them a cool option here.”
Bravest ATL sells hats, T-shirts and other merchandise with the redrawn logo and with a new set of crossed fire axes.
Sales support sending first-responders to games, and Buccafusco said that has happened dozens of times. Also, cohorts of “Bravest” fans are starting to sit together and become a more visible part of the fan base.
There are skeptics along with the supporters, Buccafusco concedes.
“We understand,” he said. “People have memories with this team. We’re trying to show them a path forward.”
This story was originally published April 17, 2025 at 7:54 AM with the headline "Change the Atlanta Braves name? NC fan and brother have their idea down to a T.."