Herschel Lynn Greer (1906-March 19, 1976) was a prominent businessman and the first president of Vols, Inc., an ownership group organized in 1959 for the purpose of keeping the Nashville Vols minor league baseball franchise in Nashville, Tennessee.
Greer worked in the financial sector, co-organizing Guaranty Mortgage Company in 1940. He served as its President and Chairman of the Board until 1969. In January 1959, Greer and thirteen other Nashville businessmen, including country music star Eddy Arnold, formed Vols, Inc. The company sold 4,876 shares of stock at $5 each. Vols, Inc. was successful in keeping the Nashville Vols in the city from 1959 to 1961. The Southern Association, of which the Vols were members, collapsed in 1961, and as a result the team did not play in 1962. In 1963, the Vols played one final season in the South Atlantic League. The team had a debt of $22,000 that could not be paid, forcing the ownership group to surrender their franchise to the league. This was the last year that professional baseball was played at Sulphur Dell ballpark, the home of the Vols, before it was demolished in 1969.
Greer died in 1976. Two years later, in 1978, Larry Schmittou brought the Nashville Sounds, an expansion team of the Double-A Southern League, to Nashville. The Greer family donated $25,000 for construction of the team's new stadium. The ballpark was named "Herschel Greer Stadium" in his honor. Greer Stadium served as the home of the Sounds from 1978 through 2014, after which they left the stadium for a new ballpark, First Tennessee Park, built on the same site as Sulphur Dell.
Video Herschel Lynn Greer
References
- General
- "Herschel Greer Stadium" (PDF). 2014 Nashville Sounds Media Guide. Minor League Baseball. 2014. p. 196. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 3, 2015. Retrieved April 14, 2015.
- Nipper, Skip (2007). Baseball in Nashville. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7385-4391-8.
- Specific
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