First Horizon Park

• Name: First Horizon Park
• GPS-able Address: 19 Junior Gilliam Way, Nashville, TN 37219
• Ballpark Owner: Metro Nashville-Davidson County
• Architects: Populous; Hastings Architectures
• Groundbreaking: 1/27/2014
• Minor League Baseball/Professional Development League Teams: Nashville Sounds (AAA) 2015-present
• Pro Baseball Class/League History: AAA/International League 2022-present; AAA/Triple-A East 2021; AAA/Pacific Coast League 2015-2020
• First Pro Baseball Game: 4/17/2015; stadium debut of Class AAA Sounds
• Others Playing or Operating Here: None
• Previous Ballpark Names: First Tennessee Park 2015-2019
• LF: 330 CF: 403 RF: 310
• Seats: 8,500
• Stated Capacity: 10,000
• House Baseball/Softball Record Attendance (as currently configured): 12,409, 7/17/2022

First Horizon Park in Nashville, TN, is the home of the Nashville Sounds, the Milwaukee Brewers' Triple-A International League farm team. Despite a bitter 2014 break-up, MLB's 2021 Minor League Reorganization put them back together.

Their previous ballpark was actually the issue. The Sounds and Pittsburgh Pirates separated after the 2004 season as a deal to build a new stadium was falling apart almost as badly as was Greer Stadium, and the Brewers became their new parent. The pair are a good geographic fit, but the parent club expressed concerns about Greer even as the Sounds assured them they were continuing to work on a new ballpark. That remained the status quo for five affiliation cycles - 10 years. During the 2013-2014 off-season, just as a new stadium was finally being built, the Sounds dropped the Brewers for the Oakland Athletics. Baseball tends to keep internal disputes internal, but Brewers' management's criticism of the move was vocal, public, and sharp.[1]

Opened in 2015 as First Tennessee Park and designed by iconic stadium architect Populous, its name changed in 2020 as First Tennessee Bank's parent company unified its brands. Seasons three and four drew Sounds regular-season attendance records, 593,679 and 601,135. Its 2017 Eclipse Party drew about 10,000, and the 2019 exhibition game with their then-parent Texas Rangers drew a then-house baseball record 11,824. Further, the Sounds led all of Professional Development League baseball in total attendance in both 2021 and 2022.

First Horizon Park has an open 360-degree concourse, a high-definition guitar-shaped video scoreboard, and the Band Box fun area: a full bar, three ping-pong tables, cornhole, board games, a nine-hole miniature golf course, a speed pitch station, the Maynard Wiffle Ball Field, a two-story-tall inflatable kids' slide - even a seven-hoop basketball shooting range.

A marker off right field shows the location of home plate in Historic Sulphur Dell, the ballpark that previously sat on the same land from 1870 through 1969. By the time ground was broken for the new ballpark, the area had fallen into urban blight. In another nod to history, the team got the city to re-name three blocks of Jackson Street on the main entrance side of the ballpark Junior Gilliam Way and gave it the 1953-1963 Dodgers second baseman's uniform number, 19, as its street number. Gilliam was born in Nashville and grew up playing baseball on its diamonds and sandlots.

FHP's success spurred an ownership group to come together and take aim at MLB, whether by expansion or relocation. The group has a team name - Nashville Stars, saluting the city's 1942 Negro Major Baseball League club - and includes celebrity members Dave Stewart, Justin Timberlake and Darius Rucker. At the suggestion of another celebrity, retired Tennessee Titans great and now Tennessee State University head football coach Eddie George, the group is looking at historically black TSU as a stadium site. The parties have signed an agreement for a site assessment for such a stadium.[2] Should it happen, it would be the first MLB ballpark on a collegiate campus.