Nashville Blues

The Nashville Blues were a minor league baseball team that played in the Southern League in 1887. They were located in Nashville, Tennessee, and played their home games at Sulphur Spring Park, later known as Sulphur Dell.

Managed by George Bradley, the team attained first place on May 9, approximately three weeks into the season, in the midst of a 12-game winning streak. The Blues stayed atop the standings for over a month, but were weakened by the resignation of Bradley on May 17 and the sale of ace pitcher Al Maul on June 13. Though little else changed with the roster, the team was not the same after these losses. Under new manager Jim Clinton, the Blues fell to fourth place out of five teams on July 19, where they remained until disbanding on August 6.

The Blues were operated by the Nashville Base Ball Association, which raised US$15,000 to fiance the team through the sale of stock. This capital and the revenue from paid attendance at Sulphur Spring Park was not sufficient to cover the $3,000 per month necessary to fund the team. After losing nearly $18,000, the directors chose to cut their losses and withdraw from the Southern League rather than spend the $6,000 needed to play the season to its completion.

A total of 21 players competed in at least one game for the Blues. Of these, 11 also played for major league teams. George Bradley, Jim Clinton, Larry Corcoran, and Jackie Hayes all came to Nashville with considerable big league experience. Among the players who went on to have notable major league careers afterward were Spider Clark, Mortimer Hogan, and Al Maul.

Professional baseball was first played in Nashville, Tennessee, by the Nashville Americans, who were charter members of the original Southern League from 1885 to 1886 and played their home games at Sulphur Spring Park, later renamed Sulphur Dell. This ballpark was to be the home of Nashville's minor league teams through 1963. The Southern League of 1886 gained a disgraceful reputation from the way clubs and league officials engaged in fraudulent activities, gambling, deals, and bargains with seemingly no law or justice being maintained by President Alexander Proudfit.

League representatives met at the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville on October 7, 1886, to discuss the affairs of the previous season and lay the groundwork for a more principled league in the next. Nashville was represented by local baseball magnates John Morrow, who was elected to serve as the league's president, and William Cherry. It was decided that each team would pay monthly dues of US$150 plus a $2,000 deposit to guarantee they would play the entire season. No limit was placed on player salaries. The meeting adjourned without having finalized the league's membership, but at the January 20, 1887, meeting in Birmingham, teams were granted to Charleston, Memphis, Mobile, Nashville, New Orleans, and Savannah. Also, the guarantee was reduced to $1,000, as other candidate cities, finding the sum too high, refused to join.

The Nashville Base Ball Association, a corporation which would operate and finance the local team with $15,000 of capital stock, met on December 21 to elect William M. Duncan as its president. The group hired as the team's manager George Bradley, a veteran player with 10 years of major league experience.

Nashville's team has come to be known as the Blues. There are no contemporary references of this moniker being attributed to the team, but it is likely an allusion to the light blue shirts and pants they wore. Occasionally, they were termed the "White Sox" because of their white stockings. As was common at the time, clubs were usually called by the names of their cities. Newspapers generally referred to them as simply Nashville, the Nashville club, or the Nashvilles. There was a team of amateur players from Vanderbilt University known as the Blues concurrent to the professional team.