Nashville Sounds

Nashville Sounds
The Nashville Sounds is a minor league baseball team of the Pacific Coast League and it is Triple-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers. They are based in Nashville, Tennessee and are named for the great association of the city and people for the promotion of the music industry. The team plays their home games at Herschel Greer Stadium, which opened in 1978 and has the capacity to hold about 10,052 people.

It was established as Double-A team in 1978, but later it had reached up to the Triple-A level in 1985. The team has a unique record of serving as a farm club for six different major league franchises. A total of twenty-one different managers have helmed the club and its nearly 800 players. The team fielded in 1981 was recognized as one of the 100 greatest minor league teams of all time. The team has set the record for the longest game in PCL history in the year of 2006. Of the three nine-inning perfect games in the history of the PCL, two have been won over by members of the Sounds.

The Sounds had won the PCL Championship in the year of 2005, they had a sweeping victory over Tacoma Rainiers in three games in the final series. In 1978, the Nashville Sounds were added as an expansion franchise team in the Double-A Southern League and were affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds. The president and part owner Larry Schmittou, head coach of the Vanderbilt University baseball team, was functional in bringing professional baseball back to Nashville.

The club started to play at Herschel Greer Stadium for the home games; it is located on the south of downtown Nashville at the foot of St. Cloud Hill in Fort Negley Park. Fans really appreciated the return of baseball to the city. The team's name, logo, and color scheme originated with the Memphis Sounds of the American Basketball Association (ABA) in 1974, it was used only for one season before the team relocated and became the Baltimore Claws.

Later at times, when the ABA merged with the National Basketball Association in 1976, there were some of the copyrights allowed to lapse, and Nashville's baseball team adopted the abandoned schemes. The blue color was added to Memphis' original red and white palate. The original "guitar swinger" logo was drawn by Schmittou and then sent to a graphic designer who had developed the final design.

The Sounds played their first home game, a 12?4 victory, on April 26, 1978 against the Savannah Braves in front of a sellout crowd of 8,156 fans.] The home opener was scheduled to take place the previous evening, but was rained out.

The team requested to open the season on the road and had to swap a series with the Chattanooga Lookouts in order to have enough time to complete the stadium. Under manager George Scherger, the Sounds started the 1979 season poorly, before rallying to win 20 of 31 games in late May and June. They entered the last game of the first half in first place, but lost to their cross-state rivals, the Memphis Chicks and finished in second place.

The Sounds made their first affiliation switch in 1980, becoming a part of the New York Yankees organization. Managers Stump Merrill and Johnny Oates and future major leaguers such as Steve Balboni, Don Mattingly, Buck Showalter, Otis Nixon, Willie McGee, Pat Tabler, and Dan Pasqua helped lead Nashville to first or second place divisional finishes from 1980 to 1984.