Nashville Seraphs

The Nashville Seraphs, often known as the Nashvilles, were a minor league baseball team that played in the Class B Southern League in 1895. They were located in Nashville, Tennessee, and played their home games at Athletic Park, later known as Sulphur Dell. The club won the Southern League pennant in their only season, becoming the city's first minor league baseball team to win a league championship.

The Nashvilles spent the majority of the season at or near the top of the league standings and held an above-.500 winning percentage on all but Opening Day. From August 15 to the season finale on September 3, the Seraphs won 20 consecutive games, which propelled them from seven games out of first place to a tie with the Atlanta Crackers atop the standings. Both teams possessed .670 records and asserted to be the rightful pennant winners. At the league's annual winter meeting that December, nearly four months later, Nashville was declared the Southern League champion for 1895.

The team was managed by George Stallings and included other former and future major league players Frank Butler, Art Herman, Lefty Marr, Tom McCreery, Sam Moran, Bert Myers, Jim Ritz, and Mike Trost. Butler and Moran were sold to the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates, respectively, during the season. Stallings and Moran, as well as George Cleve, played for the Nashville Tigers, the city's previous club, in 1894. Marr also played for the Nashville Americans, the city's first team, in 1885 and 1886.

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 Athletic Park and Sulphur Dell. This ballpark was to be the home of Nashville's minor league teams through 1963. In 1887, the city's Southern League team was called the Nashville Blues. The Nashville Tigers competed in the same league from 1893 to 1894. The Southern League disbanded in July 1894, as the result of league-wide financial instability brought on by the expense of travel and poor attendance.

In the ensuing months, baseball leaders across the South considered which cities to include in the next iteration of the Southern League. Representatives met at The Read House Hotel in Chattanooga on January 14 to reorganize for the 1895 season. Membership was granted to clubs in Atlanta, Chattanooga, Evansville, Little Rock, Memphis, Montgomery, Nashville, and New Orleans, thus lessening the expense of travel incurred in the past with the inclusion of cities such as Charleston and Savannah. Each of the eight teams paid a US$1,000 deposit to guarantee they would play the entire season. They also pledged to pay dues of $100 per month plus 3% of total gate receipts for a sinking fund. Player salaries were capped at $1,000 per team. The Nashville Baseball Association elected R. L. C. White, physician and prominent figure in the Tennessee press, to serve as president of the Nashville club.

Nashville's team has come to be known as the Seraphs. Though there are no contemporary references to this moniker, the May 4, 1895, edition of the Nashville Banner referred to the team as "Stallings' cherubs". At the time, baseball clubs were often called only by the names of their cities. Newspapers generally referred to the team as simply Nashville, the Nashville club, or the Nashvilles.

As early as October 1894, George Stallings, previously manager of the Nashville Tigers, began acquiring players for a new Nashville ball club. Stallings would serve as its player-manager. He filled the rest of the roster with men he found to be of good character and skilled ball players, some of whom had experience on major league teams. Stallings had played a few games for the Brooklyn Bridegrooms in 1890. He signed Mike Trost of the 1890 St. Louis Browns and Jim Ritz, who had played one game for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1894. He also acquired the services of his former 1894 Tigers teammates George Cleve and Sam Moran.

With Stallings' players having gathered in the city, the Nashvilles commenced practice at Athletic Park, their home field, on March 18. In further preparation for the coming season, they participated in a number of exhibition games against amateur, collegiate, minor, and major league teams. The first such game was a 17–4 victory over the Vanderbilt Commodores on the campus of Vanderbilt University on March 26. On March 28, they defeated the Nashville Athletic Club's baseball team, 12–2, at Athletic Park. On April 10 and 11, Nashville beat Ted Sullivan's Dallas Steers of the Texas-Southern League, 19–3 and 9–1.