Nashville Vols
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The Nashville Vols were a team in American minor league baseball based in Nashville, Tennessee. One of the flagship teams of the Southern Association (Class A 1902-35; Class A1 1936-45; Class AA 1946-61) from the loop's founding in 1901 through its death after the 1961 season, the Vols sent many players and managers to the major leagues. After the invention of the farm system in the early 1930s, the Vols were affiliated with such Major League Baseball teams as the New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds and Minnesota Twins. The Vols were inactive in 1962 but in 1963 they were reborn and spent one season in the Class AA South Atlantic League (now the Southern League) as an affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels.
Throughout their existence, the team played at Sulphur Dell, a notorious hitter's park often called "Suffer Hell" by pitchers and outfielders.
Professional baseball was absent from the Music City from 1964-77. But in 1978, Vanderbilt University baseball coach Larry Schmittou led a group of local owners and founded the Nashville Sounds of the Southern League (abandoning the nickname "Vols" - short for "Volunteers" and thus shared by the University of Tennessee). The Sounds became one of the most successful minor league franchises, moving to Class AAA in 1985. They are currently members of the Pacific Coast League.
