May 10, 2007

NPT Revisits Sulphur Dell

New Memories program explores unique history of legendary Nashville baseball park 

For almost 100 years, Nashville was home to one of the most unique baseball parks in the United States. Located in north Nashville near downtown, Sulphur Dell was the home field of the professional minor league team the Nashville Vols. For Nashville’s baseball fans, it was more than the only game in town; it was the place to be. 

Nashville Public Television takes viewers on a nostalgic tour of the ballpark – its history, its heyday and its hellacious right field – in MEMORIES OF SULPHUR DELL, premiering on Sunday, June 3 at 7:00 p.m. and re-airing on Thursday, June 7 at 7:00 p.m. 

Hosted by Larry Black, MEMORIES OF SULPHUR DELL pairs historic photos and footage with interviews with those who knew the stadium best, including Larry Munson, the famous voice of the George Bulldogs who was the Nashville Vols announcer from 1947-59. Also interviewed are Vols pitcher Roy Pardue (1955-57); Baseball in Nashville author Skip Nipper; “Mr. Baseball” Junie McBride; Vols fans Virgil Nipper and Walter Heckman and former Nashville Sounds Executive Vice-President Farrel Owens, among others. Insightful commentary is provided by Becky Murray Clayton, daughter of Vols owner Ted Murray. 

“It’s a fascinating part of Nashville’s history,” says the documentary’s writer, director and producer Justin Harvey, who got the idea for the program after a visit to Metro Nashville’s archives. “I’m a huge baseball fan, but knew little of Nashville’s baseball history. The more I learned about the ballpark, and talked with those who played or attended the games, the more I felt its history needed to be documented and would be a perfect addition to NPT’s Memories series.” 

Nashville Public Television’s popular Memories documentaries include Memories of Nashville, Memories of Downtown Nashville, and Memories of High School. 

A significant part of MEMORIES OF SULPHUR DELL is given to ruminations on the stadium’s unorthodox right field, known to players as “the dump.” The right field line was 262 feet, but at 224 feet from home plate, the outfield became a hill at a 45 degree angle. 

“The players that played there were often referred to as mountain goats because if they didn't stand at the base of the fence they stood half way up,” says Skip Nipper in the program. “Maybe about 240 feet from home plate there was a little shelf carved out there. We've often heard it called the shelf or the porch or actually the dump when you talk about that area out there. To be able to handle playing a ball out there like that on an incline...today, baseball would never allow a ballpark to be configured like that.”

Nipper goes on to share the story of Babe Ruth reportedly saying, when he took his first look at Sulphur Dell while in Nashville for a spring training game, that he wasn't going to play on anything “that a cow wouldn't graze on.” 

“Folklore goes that he didn't play right field, which was his normal position, and actually played left field because he didn't want to get hurt trying to scramble up and down that right field corner,” says Nipper. 

Babe Ruth wasn’t the only major leaguer to pass through town and play at Sulphur Dell. Other baseball greats that took the field, often en route from spring training in the south back up north, included Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Pepper Martin, Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige. 

By the late 50s, the Vols success as a ball club had started to dwindle, and with the addition of televisions and air-conditioning to people’s homes, so did attendance at the stadium. The last professional baseball game was played at Sulphur Dell in 1963, and six years later, the stadium was leveled for a parking lot. 

At the time of the stadium’s destruction in 1969, it was the oldest professional baseball park in existence. 

“It was different,” says Munson of the time in Nashville when Sulphur Dell was popular. “That was a big part of America. Baseball … minor league baseball.”

Nashville Public Television is available free and over the air to nearly 2.2 million people throughout the Middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky viewing area, and is watched by more than 600,000 households every week. The mission of NPT is to provide, through the power of traditional television and interactive telecommunications, high quality educational, cultural and civic experiences that address issues and concerns of the people of the Nashville region, and which thereby help improve the lives of those we serve. 

Copyright Rice-Russell (Tennessee) SABR Chapter 2007