Herschel Greer Stadium
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Herschel Greer Stadium, named for Herschel Lynn Greer, is a minor league baseball stadium. It is located in Nashville, Tennessee on the grounds of Fort Negley, an American Civil War fortification located approximately two miles (three km) south of downtown Nashville. The stadium is most recognizable by its large guitar-shaped scoreboard, on which the line score is displayed across the neck.
Greer, as it is familiarly called, was built in 1978 as a venue for the Nashville Sounds, originally a AA minor league baseball team in the Southern League, affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds. During the team's operation it has subsequently been in several leagues and affiliated with several major league organizations; the Sounds are currently in the AAA Pacific Coast League and affiliated with the Milwaukee Brewers. In the early 1990s the stadium simultaneously hosted the Nashville Xpress, a Southern League team which played its home games when the Sounds were on the road, and vice versa.
Greer was considered a modern, attractive minor league stadium in its early years and was home to some of the largest crowds in the minor leagues in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Since then it has lost its status as a premier minor league facility and compares very unfavorably with the relatively-luxurious minor league stadiums which have been built in recent years, most notably AutoZone Park in Memphis. In fact, it now falls well below the standards set for a AAA stadium by Organized Baseball, and in recent years the Sounds consistently threatened to move, either to a new stadium in a Nashville suburb or out of the Nashville area entirely.
The City of Nashville and the Sounds are working on building a new stadium downtown across the river from Titans Stadium. In April 2007 the city voted down giving the Sounds an extension on their request to find support, so the fate of the new park is in question.
Greer has been the subject of major additions, and even some contraction, over the years and currently seats just over 10,000. At one point the baseball team of Belmont University had expressed an interest in adopting it as its home field after the Sounds left; recently this interest has seemed to wane and the Bruins seem more interested in the construction of an on-campus facility.
In the early 1980's, Greer was the home field for the Father Ryan High School football team. Ryan, a Nashville Catholic school, does not have a stadium. In 2006, Ryan and the Sounds signed a two-year contract to return to Greer for the 2006 and 2007 seasons. In the football configuration, the field runs from third base toward right field.
[edit] External links
|
Nashville athletic venues |
| Current ballparks in the Pacific Coast League | ||
| American Conference | Pacific Conference | |
|---|---|---|
| AT&T Bricktown Ballpark | AutoZone Park | Dell Diamond | Herschel Greer Stadium | Isotopes Park | Principal Park | Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium | Zephyr Field | Cashman Field | Cheney Stadium | Chukchansi Park | Franklin Covey Field | PGE Park | Raley Field | Security Service Field | Tucson Electric Park | |
