BOSTON >> Tobacco juice and sunflower seeds are no longer strewn along the right-field line, and the trolley tracks that guided legions of fans directly into Braves Field have long since been paved over.

But the history of championship baseball lingers in the cracks and concrete walls of the old right-field pavilion of Braves Field, where Boston professional baseball was integrated, where the Cleveland Indians last won the World Series and where Babe Ruth pitched one of the greatest games in Series history for the Boston Red Sox.

That gem by Ruth helped the Red Sox win the championship at Braves Field in 1916, the only previous postseason meeting between this year’s World Series franchises. (The Red Sox defeated the Brooklyn Robins — the forebears of the Los Angeles Dodgers.)

Today, the remnants of that long-ago stadium can be seen in the little clues around what is now Nickerson Field, a soccer and lacrosse stadium at Boston University. The passageway under the stands remains virtually intact from the Boston Braves’ days, and the team’s old administration building is now a B.U. police station.

Nickerson Field is a historical marker that connects a sports-crazy region’s bountiful present to a glorious past. The line from Babe Ruth to Tom Brady, two of the greatest to ever play here, goes right through the field.

Millions of fans attended the Boston Braves’ National League games from 1915, when Braves Field opened, until 1952, when the team moved to Milwaukee. Among them was a boy named Robert K. Kraft, who would become the owner of the New England Patriots.

“I’ll never forget when they moved,” Kraft, 77, said in a telephone interview about his beloved Braves. “It completely rocked my world. I was 12 years old, and I actually remember crying over it.”

Kraft used to sit along the third-base line, where he discovered he could catch more foul balls, and he still reels off the names of his old heroes as if they were members of his current football team: Bob Elliott, Alvin Dark, Del Crandall, Sid Gordon.

He recited the old saying about Spahn and Sain and praying for rain, referring to the team’s two best pitchers, Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain. If not for a child’s painful memory of that betrayal, the Patriots might not exist today as winners of five Super Bowl titles with Brady as their quarterback. They could have been the St. Louis Stallions or the Jacksonville Sand Crabs.

But before James Busch Orthwein, former owner of the Patriots, could execute his plan to move the team to St Louis and rename them the Stallions, Kraft stepped in and bought the Patriots in 1994 with the intention of keeping them in New England.

He had invested $25 million to buy the Patriots’ stadium, and when an earlier owner, Victor Kiam, offered Kraft triple that to buy the decrepit old building, Kraft turned it down. The Patriots would not follow the Braves out the door to the Midwest.

“No amount of money could make up for what I felt and what all the dedicated fans in the region felt at that time,” Kraft said.

A former Patriots season-ticket holder, Kraft saw the formerly itinerant Boston football team at every venue they had played in previously, including Nickerson Field in their inaugural season of 1960. The owner of the Pats at the time was Billy Sullivan, who made his bones in Boston sports as the public relations director for the Braves.

Braves Field opened in 1915 as a grand, concrete-and-steel edifice that claimed to be the biggest of its kind. The size attracted the Red Sox, who asked the Braves if they could play the 1915 World Series there, less than 2 miles from Fenway Park, to accommodate more fans.

It had a huge outfield, particularly in right, and it was not uncommon for hundreds of fans to stand in the outfield playing area behind ropes, taking in the action at arm’s length from the players.

The Red Sox beat the Philadelphia Phillies in five games, and Braves Field hosted the World Series again the next year when Boston played the Robins. In Game 2, before more than 47,000, Ruth pitched a 14-inning complete game in a 2-1 victory, and the Red Sox won that series in five games, too.

The only noticeable drawback at Braves Field was the old locomotives steaming in and out of the old Boston & Albany rail yard, spewing cinders on the fans and players. Some of the stands were covered, but the right-field pavilion was open then, as it is now, as Nickerson Field’s main seating area.

“People can go there today and sit in the same seats that people sat in for the 1916 World Series,” said Bob Brady, the president of the Boston Braves Historical Association, whose grandfather was a devoted fan of the team.

If not for the research and advocacy of the historical association, small existing details from the old yard, like the pointed capstones along the perimeter wall of Nickerson Field, might go unnoticed. There are also photographs of Braves Field and its players, and plaques commemorating the original stadium in the hallway underneath Nickerson Field’s main stands. The street behind home plate, which used to be called Gaffney Street after the owner of the Braves when the stadium opened, is now Braves Field Way.

The Braves won the 1914 World Series, but did not get back until 1948, when they lost Game 6 at home to the Indians. It was the last time Cleveland won the World Series.

Perhaps the most significant event at Braves Field came April 21, 1950, when Sam Jethroe, an African-American outfielder, broke Boston baseball’s color barrier. That was nine years before Pumpsie Green played for the Red Sox.

One of the last things the Braves did before they left Boston was sign Hank Aaron, in June 1952. But Aaron, who broke Ruth’s home run record in 1974 for the Atlanta Braves, never played for the big-league club until it moved to Milwaukee.

Once the Braves vanished from Boston, B.U. bought the field, which still sits alongside the train tracks overlooking the Charles River and Cambridge, a view largely blocked by an elevated highway. The Patriots and the Boston Breakers of the old United States Football League played at the stadium, as did the Boston Bolts of the American Soccer League.

Today, three large dormitories hover over the field behind the area where home plate was. Most of the students are oblivious to the rich history that once played out below.

“I don’t know much about baseball,” said Ayush Suri, a freshman from New Delhi, “but I’ve heard of Babe Ruth. He played down there? That’s crazy.”

A few years ago, Kraft sat on the same field during a ceremony for honorary graduates, and he reflected on his summer days spent listening to games on the radio and chasing foul balls down the third-base line.

“It was full circle,” Kraft said. “You know, loyalty is very important to us, and I still have that memory. But anyhow, it worked out well.”