The East Tennessee Historical Society recently unveiled a new exhibit at the East Tennessee History Center all about the history of baseball in Tennessee, called “Home Runs and Home Teams.”
The exhibit’s head curator Adam Alfrey says he was inspired by the recent completion of Covenant Health Park in The Old City which opened earlier this year. The new ballpark is home to The Knoxville Smokies, a Double-A team affiliated with the Chicago Cubs that had previously been located in Kodak.
“We thought it was a beautiful time to really take an opportunity to look at what role baseball has played in our state's history, how it's developed, and how we came to where we are today,” Alfrey said. “It is a survey of the entire state. So we try to tell stories that are sort of overarching to it.”
To help generate conversation about the exhibit, the center hosted a panel of historians in July.
They shared stories of players local to Knoxville, historic stadiums in Nashville and beyond. They were eager to share their thoughts on how baseball has changed over time.
“It's the first time anyone's done the history of baseball in Tennessee, so it's all original research,” said Warren Dockter, President and CEO of the East Tennessee Historical Society. “It's been a huge and fantastic exhibition, and we really hope to be able to even travel around the state in the future.”
Though the state has never had a major league baseball team, Tennessee has been home to over 30 minor league teams and a slew of famous baseball players, including current Los Angeles Dodgers’ short-stop Mookie Betts of Nashville.
“Last time I checked, there's over 1,000 Tennesseans who have gone into the major league to play,” baseball historian Dean Novelli said. “They had to learn somewhere, that's part of their story, part of the major league story.”
Beginning near the dawn of baseball, in the mid-19th century, the exhibit contains some of the earliest artifacts of the sport, including a journal entry from an East Tennessee man describing and drawing a game of baseball played in Mexico during the Mexican-American War.
“In his diary, he said, while they were in camp in Mexico near Matamoros, that they would play baseball,” Alfrey explained. “And in that illustration behind the camp, in an open field, there are four players and a diamond, someone standing off to the side.”
However it wasn’t until a few years after the Civil War that Knoxville got its first baseball team: the Knoxville Holstons. Front and center, visitors can see a recreation of Holston's uniforms from the 1860s. Alfrey said it wasn’t an easy process to recreate the design, having to strictly work off of written depictions.
“We have a record that these early teams, especially the Holstons team, took a picture – a photograph – at one of the early photography studios on Gay Street.” Alfrey said. “We don't know if that image exists, or if it does where it is, so we really had to work on newspaper accounts from that period of time to recreate that.”
Baseball endured in East Tennessee during the Great Depression. After President Franklin Roosevelt signed legislation to create the Civilian Conservation Corps, many people worked to create infrastructure for the state and national parks. Most of them needed downtime at night.
“Those individuals that were a part of those camps – that were working, building trails, building roads during the day-- at night, they needed some entertainment,” Alfrey said. “So they played baseball, and so they had these camps playing with one another.
Alfrey also added that when driving through the Cade’s Cove area of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, you can see a clear flat field where many speculate baseball was played.
The exhibit is also aimed to highlight not only the influence Tennessee has had on baseball, but the role it plays in communities. Alfrey recalled what somebody once told him about baseball games.
“They have such a pace that you get to turn to your side and talk to the people with you,” he said. “It becomes more about not only what's going on the field, but what's going on in the stands.”
“Home Runs and Home Teams” will be on display at the East Tennessee History Center until September 28th.
This story was co-produced with students from the University of Tennessee's School of Journalism and Media.