HISTORY NASHVILLE BASEBALL HISTORY the 2019 Season Signifies the 42Nd Season for the Nashville Sounds
HISTORY NASHVILLE BASEBALL HISTORY The 2019 season signifies the 42nd season for the Nashville Sounds. It’s the 22nd season as a member of the 16- team Pacific Coast League, and the first as the Triple-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers. Despite the 42nd season as the Nashville Sounds, baseball’s roots in Nashville go back to the 19th Century. In fact, baseball has been played in Middle Tennessee since at least 1860, when the Republican Banner newspaper published a July 25th report on the game’s popularity the previous fall. During the Civil War, Union soldiers temporarily based here helped spread the game in the local community. Home field was a place known as the Sulphur Springs Bottom, a half-mile north of today’s state capitol. When the original Southern League was organized in 1885, Nashville was a charter city and games were played at Nashville’s Athletic Park, as the Sulphur Springs Bottom location came to be known. The city fielded several entries in the league over the next ten years -- the Americans (1885-86), the Blues (1887), the Tigers (1893-94), and the Seraphs (1895) -- but was unable to claim a pennant. When the Southern Association was formed in 1901, Athletic Park – which was later given the name Sulphur Dell by famed sportswriter Grantland Rice -- became the permanent home to the Nashville Volun- teers (or Vols, for short), who played there for the next 61 years. Under the guidance of manager Newt Fisher, the Nashville club won the SA’s first two pennants. The team, which was not known as the Vols until a “name the team” contest conducted prior to the 1908 season, continued to build a solid, loyal fan base.
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