Scorin’ on the Guitar in the Music City

The main entrance to Greer Stadium, down the first-base line, Jul-2013.

The seating bowl is typical of 1970s construction.

Here, you see the distinctive scoreboard that made this place stand out.

Chronological Tour: Stop 148

• Location: Chestnut & 8th Streets, Nashville, Tenn. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1978
• Demolished: 2019
• Home team: Nashville Sounds, Southern League (1978-84), American Association (1985-97), Pacific Coast League (1998-2014); Nashville Xpress, Southern League (1993-94)
• Capacity: 10,700

Rating: 2 baseballs

Nashville, which just happens to be the capital of the Volunteer State, is better known as the Music City. The Grand Ole Opry has originated from here since the 1930s, and that helped build the town’s reputation as a hotbed of country music. In commemoration of all this, the team that’s played in Nashville since the 1970s is known as the Sounds. They’ve even worked musical notes into their logo.

Now Herschel Greer Stadium was an otherwise dull, uninspiring place, although it was fairly comfortable for watching a ball game. It knew its role. It wasn’t aligned for a beautiful view of downtown, or anything like that. It was just a baseball stadium. But the redeeming feature of the place is the scoreboard, visible above and to the right. The Fair-Play board was shaped like a guitar, with message and video boards in the barrel, the line score in the neck, and the batter’s number, count, and outs up near the tuning knobs.

For two seasons in the early 1990s, Greer Stadium hosted two teams. The former Charlotte Orioles of the Southern League moved in and became known as the Xpress; they left in 1995 to become the Port City Roosters.

The 2014 season was the last one at Greer Stadium for the Sounds. The city of Nashville broke ground on a new ballpark in the Sulphur Dell area, where the Nashville Volunteers played through 1963. The new stadium was ready for the 2015 season, and the Greer structure was finally torn down in 2019. The 1978 stadium was adjacent to Fort Negley Park, a Civil War site that may be expanded as a result of the ballpark being vacated.