The Richmond Braves were an American minor league baseball club based in Richmond, Virginia, the Triple-A International League affiliate of the Atlanta Braves from 1966 to 2008. Owned by the parent Atlanta club and colloquially referred to as the R-Braves, they played their home games at a stadium called The Diamond on Richmond's Northside built for them in 1985, and before then Parker Field on the same site. The franchise moved to Gwinnett County, Georgia in 2009 to play in the newly built Coolray Field as the Gwinnett Braves. The R-Braves came to Richmond in 1966 after the Braves' top affiliate, the Atlanta Crackers, moved to Virginia. The then-Milwaukee Braves had bought the Crackers as part of their planned move to Atlanta in 1965; under MLB rules of the day, they bought the Crackers in order to obtain the major league rights to Atlanta. However, an injunction forced the Braves to play a lame-duck season in Milwaukee in 1965, leaving them to operate the Crackers in Atlanta for one more season. When searching for a new home for the Crackers, they landed in Richmond, where Parker Field had been left open by the previous year's move of the Richmond Virginians, a New York Yankees affiliate that moved in 1965. At the time of the R-Braves' departure to Gwinnett, only the Baltimore Orioles and their Appalachian League affiliate, the Bluefield Orioles, had held a longer affiliation agreement in a single city than Atlanta/Richmond's 43 seasons. The Braves played their final game on September 1, 2008, against their long-time intrastate rivals, the Norfolk Tides. Richmond won, 9–3, in front of a sellout crowd of 12,167. After the game players and alumni threw balls and other keepsakes to fans in the stands, and fans were able to walk onto the field. In 2010, the Double-A Eastern League's Connecticut Defenders, a San Francisco Giants affiliate (but independently owned), moved to Richmond to play as the Richmond Flying Squirrels. Titles The R-Braves won the Governors' Cup, the championship of the International League, five times, and played in ten championship series. 1966 – Lost to Toronto 1976 – Lost to Syracuse 1978 – Defeated Pawtucket 1981 – Lost to Columbus 1983 – Lost to Tidewater 1986 – Defeated Rochester 1989 – Defeated Syracuse 1994 – Defeated Syracuse 2004 – Lost to Buffalo 2007 – Defeated Durham; lost to Sacramento (PCL) in AAA Championship Game Alumni Tommie