Songfacts®:

• Despite being one of the most dominant baseball teams in the 1990s, the Atlanta Braves won only one World Series during the decade (damn Yankees!). This makes them great metaphor material for something with lots of potential that doesn't pan out. In this acoustic strummer, Morgan Wallen draws parallels between the Braves' disappointing playoff exit in the 1998 NLCS against the San Diego Padres and a romantic relationship that got close to marriage but came up short.
• Wallen didn't contribute to the writing of the song - John Byron, Josh Miller and Travis Wood wrote it. The country star was five years old in the 1998 season, but has always loved the sport. He had a successful high school baseball career and hopes of playing in college or even professionally, but an elbow injury during his senior year of high school prevented him from pursuing that path. After his baseball dreams derailed, Wallen found his calling with music.
• This isn't Wallen's first baseball reference in his music. The country star plays a pitcher on his hometown high school baseball team in the video for the Dangerous track "7 Summers."
• "'98 Braves" is a rare bird - a country song that flirts with the great American pastime of baseball. There's surprisingly little baseball in country music, though a few notable exceptions do exist. Alabama's 1993 ditty "The Cheap Seats" is an ode to minor league ball and bad concessions. Trace Adkins took a swing at metaphor in 2006 with "Swing," comparing romance to striking out at the plate, and Kip Moore's "Reckless (Growing Up)" reminisces about a would-be baseball career that fizzled out.
  
  Then there's John Fogerty's "Centerfield," which isn't country but deserves honorary mention for sheer exuberance. If ever there were a song that made middle-aged men spontaneously mime swinging a bat, this is it.