My lifelong love affair with baseball began as a child in the tiny kitchen of my grandparents' rental home, where Alton sat at a Formica-topped table with his glass of Ballantine beer and a Tiparillo listening to the hapless Philadelphia Phillies on a transistor radio. Between innings he explained rules and strategy, but I wasn't allowed so much as a peep during the play-by-play. He listened to every game until another losing season ended with the defeated snapping-off of the dial. Though he lived less than 20 minutes from Connie Mack Stadium, he never attended a game there in his life.
But I carried my grandfather's lessons to every game I was lucky enough to attend during the seven-and-a-half baseball seasons I lived in New York, whether channeling his Phillies' frustration watching the equally hapless Mets at Shea Stadium, or thrilling to the storied history, heroics and drama that unfolded at Yankee Stadium.
In July 1981, RCA Records Nashville courted me to leave my job as an editor at a national men's magazine and move to Music City to become director of publicity. I have sometimes thought that if MLB had not been on a prolonged strike that summer, leaving baseball fans as lost as if someone had turned off the sun, I would not have given notice to my employer and subleased my Manhattan apartment just two days before the strike ended July 31. On the night of Sept. 13, 1981, when Ron Guidry and the Yankees beat the Red Sox in the Bronx, I would have been there — instead of using RCA's ticket in Section S, Row 5 of Greer Stadium, as the Nashville Sounds played the Orlando Twins for the Southern League Championship.
Ironically, the mighty Yankees were the parent team of these boys playing AA ball. I was feeling as blue as the seat I was in when a man behind me asked if he could buy me a beer. Outside of my office, Imogene and Clyde Green — she a beautician, he a mortician, and both Row 6 season-ticket holders — were the first two people I met in Nashville. Beer vendor David Smith was the third. They filled me in on Nashville baseball history, from Sulphur Dell's 90-year run that ended in 1963 to Greer's inaugural game on April 26, 1978. They were there.
They were there opening day April 15, 1982, and so was I. And after RCA canned me that June, the Greens made sure I had a seat with them whenever I wanted. When owner Larry Schmittou changed affiliations to Detroit and transitioned the Sounds from AA to AAA in 1985, the Greens stopped coming. They thought the more polished Triple A players were too full of themselves. I moved to a row midway up in Section T. It was there on June 25, 1989, that I watched Ron Guidry — hero of so many seasons at Yankee Stadium — try to pitch his way back from an injury, and fail. He lasted less than three rain-soaked innings before manager and friend Bucky Dent mercifully pulled him from the mound. It was one of the saddest nights I ever witnessed in baseball.
The first time I took my two toddlers to a Sounds game, I pushed the double-stroller down the concourse to the back row of Section T, which is where their lifelong love affair with baseball began. Their father worked many nights, and Greer was a quick drive from our Belmont neighborhood. We came late and left early, and I measured their interest in the game by how many innings (and concession trips) they lasted. It helped that the guitar scoreboard was brand new, and most of the promo games took place on the third base side. When their father and I split up in April 1997, it was fortuitous that it coincided with the start of baseball season. Rather than face his empty chair at the dinner table, we took our three seats in Section T, Row 21.
Amid all the loss, insecurity, fear and sadness that summer, there was delight — in foul balls captured in the gloves they optimistically wore; in comfort from ushers and vendors who knew their names and slipped them treats; in the new sense of independence when they were allowed on their own to buy a plastic miniature batting helmet filled with soft-serve ice cream; in their increased understanding of the game from our view of the field and the Sounds bullpen below; and in the unbridled joy of running the bases after the final out. Sitting in darkened Greer Stadium, my son on one side and my daughter on the other, their upturned faces lit by fireworks exploding over Nashville's night sky, I didn't think I had ever been so simultaneously happy and heartbroken.
My kids are passionate and knowledgeable baseball fans; we have spent spring breaks at spring training, been to Yankee Stadium old and new, and visited a dozen more major league parks. But Greer Stadium, shabby and outdated, holds tight to that part of the heart reserved for first loves, no matter how flawed. Both kids, now grown, have gone with me this summer to say goodbye. As we lingered to watch kids running the bases after the game, I saw ghosts of my carefree children, flying along the white lines of a diamond cut in red dirt bordered by green grass, Joy turning a perfect cartwheel between third and home, Harry pausing to help a fallen toddler to his feet. I could see on their faces the precious memory of those days — the poignant reality that they are, like childhood, forever gone.
One of the things we love most about baseball is its timelessness, the only team sport not played to a clock. Each side gets 27 outs, and even when 26 are used, all baseball fans know there is still hope as long as there is one more out.
We are sadly aware the fat lady is warming up under the stands for the final out at Herschel Greer Stadium. So here's to the faded ballpark that held us close and gave us one of the sweetest chapters of our lives. It wasn't pretty — but lit by fireworks on a timeless summer night, it was a thing of beauty.
The Nashville Sounds' final eight-game regular-season home stand at Greer Stadium — the "Last Cheer at Greer" — runs through Aug. 27.
Email editor@nashvillescene.com.
