HERSCHEL GREER STADIUM

'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.
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.
The Sounds had planed on leaving Greer Stadium for a new ballpark in 2009. After years of the Sounds lobbying for a new park and threatening to leave town (either for the suburbs or a new location altogether), the Nashville Metro Council approved the new stadium on February 7, 2006. First Tennessee Field was planned for construction on the west bank of the Cumberland River in downtown Nashville, just two miles north of the current stadium. The Sounds and private developers Struever Brothers, Eccles, and Rouse were unable to finalize financing and design plans for the new stadium by the April 15, 2007 deadline set by the Nashville Metro Council. A new ballpark for the Sounds will not be built in Nashville; whether the team will stay at Greer, perhaps by renovating the stadium, or pursue a move to another city is not yet certain^[1].

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References

1. Brewer, Clint. "Sounds, Franklin talk ballpark on." ''nashvillecitypaper.com'' 15 August 2007..

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