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Nashville Americans

The Nashville Americans were a minor league baseball team that played in the Class B Southern League from 1885 to 1886. They were located in Nashville, Tennessee, and played their home games at Sulphur Spring Park, later known as Sulphur Dell.

The team was formed on October 6, 1884, as Nashville's first professional baseball team. They played several exhibition games against major league teams that fall at the Nashville Fairgrounds as they sought admission to the Union Association, one of three major leagues at the time. Instead, they were selected as charter members of the Southern League for the next season.

The 1885 Americans were managed at different times by local player Will Bryan, second baseman Nate Kellogg, and local businessman John R. Mayberry. They played well throughout the season and compiled a 62–39 (.614) record, placing third. They spent the majority of the season in either second or third place. Led by left fielder Walt Goldsby, the 1886 team played well but finished in a distant third place with a record of 46–38 (.548).

Baseball was first played in Nashville, Tennessee, by amateur teams in the late 1860s. By summer 1884, the city was home to countless teams, with an estimated 20 clubs being formed that year alone. The various teams played at fields around town, including East Nashville's Spring Park, the Nashville Fairgrounds, Fort Negley, Vanderbilt University, and Sulphur Spring Bottom.

On October 6, 1884, the American Baseball Association, a local stock company with US$1,000 in capital, met to establish the city's first professional baseball team. The club was to be known as the Americans in honor of The Nashville Daily American newspaper, which, in addition to the Nashville Banner, provided scores and accounts of the city's many baseball games. Will Bryan, a well-known local player, was selected to manage the team. He promptly left for Cincinnati with instructions to hire first-class players with no regard to their cost.

The Union Association, one of three major leagues in operation in 1884, considered the Americans for membership in the 1885 season. On October 10, President Henry Lucas came to Nashville to meet with the team's directors and to survey the prospect of major league baseball in the city. That afternoon at the fairgrounds, the Americans played their first exhibition game against one of the association's top teams, the Cincinnati Outlaw Reds. Approximately 1,200 to 1,500 people were in attendance as the Outlaw Reds won, 6–3. The Americans were defeated again in the next afternoon's game, 11–2. On October 12, Nashville lost to an amateur team from Georgetown, Kentucky, 4–1. The home team won its only games of the autumn exhibition season on October 19 and 20, defeating the Georgetowns, 6–2 and 9–3. The Louisville Eclipse of the major American Association came to Nashville for two games on November 1 and 2, winning both, 7–6 and 9–7.

On November 7, club directors signed a five-year contract to lease the baseball grounds at Sulphur Spring Bottom on which they would build a ballpark to be called Sulphur Spring Park. Located just north of the Tennessee State Capitol, the site was owned by the Sulphur Spring Company, which used the property for providing hot and cold baths with water from its natural sulphur springs. The land had hitherto been little more than solely a baseball field and required improvements to make it suitable for a professional team. The old bath houses were demolished and replaced with new ones, and the grounds were graded, leveled, sowed with grass, and enclosed by a 15-foot (4.6 m) fence. A grandstand was erected in the northeastern corner of the block near the intersection of Cherry Street (Fourth Avenue North) and Jackson Street.

With the possibility of membership in Union Association looking dim, Bryan attended a meeting of Southern baseball men on November 25 in Montgomery to organize the Southern League for 1885. Though a tentative membership was arranged, the final league makeup was not determined until another meeting on February 11 at the Kimball House in Atlanta, where franchises were granted to Atlanta, Augusta, Chattanooga, Columbus, Macon, Memphis, and Nashville, with Birmingham later admitted from a pool of applicants.

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