Could MLB work in Nashville? Meet a man with a plan to make it happen

Can you picture a fastball coming off the hand of a New York Yankees pitcher and hear the crack of it being hit by a Nashville batter?

Can you see that ball sailing over the fence, then gaze beyond the outfield seats and across the Cumberland River at the downtown skyline of the Music City?

John Loar, a 59-year-old businessman who moved here from the San Francisco Bay area about six months ago, can. He has a vision for a Major League Baseball franchise playing in a 42,000-seat stadium located on the East Bank.

And he has a plan to make it happen.

“I think Major League Baseball is going to expand, and it’s going to be either Charlotte or Nashville,” he said. “If you really want to have baseball, you’ve got to start now.”

Some civic leaders are skeptical.

And although Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred last summer named Nashville as one of six cities the league is considering for future expansion, Loar has not met with him. 

It’s not clear whether Nashville could support a baseball team in addition to the Titans, the Predators and an upcoming Major League Soccer franchise. Nashville would need to build a new stadium, fill seats for 81 games per year and find corporate sponsors.

How it all started

Manfred caught Nashville by surprise when he dropped the city’s name during a television interview last July at the MLB All-Star Game. He also mentioned Portland , Las Vegas and Charlotte, as well as Montreal and Vancouver in Canada.

“I was probably as surprised as anybody to read that coming from the commissioner,” said Butch Spyridon, CEO of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp., “but I also would say that means he’s been paying attention.”

Nashville’s success in hosting the 2016 NHL All-Star Game and the excitement of tens of thousands of fans flooding Lower Broadway for the 2017 Stanley Cup Final made the sports world take notice.

Then Nashville was awarded the 2019 NFL draft.

“It’s a big event city, it’s a great sports city when you look what we’ve been doing the past few years, the history of the Titans and the warm reception for soccer,” said Predators CEO Sean Henry.

A real estate developer who also has a background in sports and entertainment business, Loar says he was contracted — a non-disclosure agreement prevents him from saying by whom — in 2017 to analyze several cities as possible locations for a major league franchise. Nashville was one of those cities.

“I think Nashville is one of the hottest markets in the country — I’m not the only one saying that — and it’s become a tourist destination. There’s a reason to come here,” he said.

The Las Vegas model

The metropolitan area has more than 1.9 million residents, according to 2017 U.S. Census estimates, ranking it 36th in the country. That’s larger than Milwaukee, the smallest current MLB market, yet smaller than expansion contenders Portland, Charlotte and Las Vegas.

Music City has an edge in the television market. The Nielsen Company’s fall 2018 numbers rate Nashville as the 27th-largest TV market. 

In 2018, the Nashville Sounds Triple-A team attracted more than 600,000 — an average of 8,741 fans per game — to rank fourth in minor league attendance, according to Ballpark Digest.

“We’re proud of what we have accomplished,” said Adam Nuse, the Sounds’ general manager, “but that’s at the minor league level. Taking that next step is yet to be seen.”

MLB games averaged an attendance of 28,830 last season.

Sonny Gray, former Smyrna High and Vanderbilt star who pitches for the New York Yankees, said the city is big enough.

“It has turned into a big city, and people love baseball around here,” he said. “Nashville has never been more ready for a major league team than it is now.”

Judging by how they have embraced the Predators and Titans, a Music City major league team could count on support from newcomers to the area.

“I came here from (Washington) D.C. and there’s no major league team here, so I’m a (Nationals) fan,” said Brian Kelley, a military retiree who moved to Nashville five years ago. “I made the switch from the Capitals to the Predators, I made the switch from the Steelers to the Titans. I’m willing to switch.”

Nashville also attracts about 15 million visitors per year.

“This is one of the top tourist destinations in the country, and you want to tap into that,” Loar said. “If you’re going to continue to build hotels, 81 (home games) a year can help fill those.”

Las Vegas has a successful hockey franchise and will add an NFL team in 2020 when the Oakland Raiders relocate. Those teams will rely on high rollers as much as local residents to fill seats. Loar wants to replicate that for baseball in Nashville.

“It’s the Las Vegas model,” he said, “without the gambling.”

Can Nashville afford another stadium?

The city has committed $275 million to build a 30,500-seat stadium at Fairgrounds Nashville for its new soccer team. Metro government spent $91 million in 2015 to build the Sounds’ First Tennessee Park — a 10,000-seat stadium that can’t be expanded to major league proportions.

Mayor David Briley told Loar during a 2018 meeting that no public funds would be available to bring baseball to Nashville.

“Our focus remains on our number one priority, getting our MLS team ready,” said Thomas Mulgrew, a spokesman for the mayor.

That doesn’t dissuade Loar.

“The how to do that is it needs to be a real estate master plan community development,” Loar said.

His plan includes a stadium and a mixed-use development on property near Nissan Stadium, home of the NFL’s Titans. The two stadiums could then share parking lots.

Loar notes a city-commissioned study shows the Titans’ stadium needs nearly $300 million in capital improvements. He said spending that much on a facility that hosts eight home games per year along with a similar number of concerts or other events makes for a low return on investment. Baseball’s big home schedule would increase traffic to the area.

“I think this may be a complementary use where potentially you could benefit in the long term to help the Titans accomplish their objectives,” Loar said, “and also bring Major League Baseball here and kind of find a way to pay for it using the back end tax revenues that exist.”

An alternative site could be the PSC Metals scrap yard on the East Bank.

“The whole flood plain along the East Bank makes a lot of sense,” Spyridon said. “There’s a lot of real estate. There’s a lot of interest. There are people that have compiled acres and acres of land, and then there’s that obvious eyesore of the scrap yard.”

Gov. Bill Lee hasn’t met with Loar but supports the idea of bringing another professional sports franchise to the state.

“I think when we look at any potential significant employer that’s coming into our state and is going to bring economic activity, we would look at incentive packages,” he said.

Finding corporate dollars

A stadium needs a corporate sponsor to pay big money for naming rights, but baseball requires much more to thrive.

“You’ve got to have a lot of big companies that buy 30 and 40 season tickets,” said Farrell Owens, who was general manager for the Sounds in their first five seasons.

Spyridon isn’t convinced the city’s corporate profile is ready for the demands of a baseball franchise.

“That’s always been the Achilles’ heel for the market,” he said. “But that’s starting to change with AllianceBernstein and Ernst & Young and certainly Amazon. So we’re getting stronger, but we’ve got to have a significant base to support, in particular, for baseball — long season, lot of suite sales and a lot of signage.”

Henry thinks there’s enough to go around.

“I always bristle at that,” he said. “It’s on the teams to make that happen. Whether we’re one of the biggest cities or small cities for corporate headquarters is almost secondary: It’s your job to reach out and get them to engage with you.”

The Titans wouldn’t stand in the way. “We have been part of the growth of Nashville as a sports town over the last 20-plus years and we wouldn’t put any limits on is ceiling,” the Titans said in a statement. 

Bringing in heavy hitters

This isn’t Loar’s first attempt to acquire a major league ball club. In 2012, he worked with Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa as part of a group’s failed bid to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers. Five years later, he was involved with a failed bid to purchase the Miami Marlins.

Loar said the next step is a feasibility study. He also has assembled an advisory board that includes Dave Stewart, a former World Series MVP.

Loar also wants the Music City’s entertainment community on board. He can count country star Vince Gill among those who want to see it happen.

“I think we’re poised for it,” said Gill, who played baseball growing up in Oklahoma. “The city’s on fire. I think it would be a home run.

“We’ve got football and hockey and soccer. We’re as big a city as St. Louis, we’re as big a city as Milwaukee and a bunch of cities that have teams, so I don’t see why we couldn’t.”

Vanderbilt baseball coach TIm Corbin is also on Loar’s advisory board.

“There’s a lot of foundations that have to be built in order for it to happen,” he said. “The size of the city and where it’s going, I think in time that’s a real possibility.”

Grassroots support for baseball

Skip Nipper is secretary of the Nashville Old Timers Baseball Association. He opened the Twitter account @mlb_nashville last April, before the commissioner mentioned the possibility of the big leagues coming to town.

“I started it on a whim to see if there was interest,” he said. “I just did it because I’m a baseball historian and I wanted to see if there was another opportunity to get information out about how important it is for Major League Baseball to come to Nashville.”

Loar believes the MLB expansion will come within the next five to seven years. The league says it won’t consider adding teams until it solves local stadium issues in Tampa and Oakland, which raises the possibility that either of those franchises could relocate.

“What I’m hoping to accomplish is to have the people in Nashville and the surrounding communities just take a step back and really try to make in their own minds a determination whether they can envision Major League Baseball here and whether it would be good for the city,” he said. “If it is, how do we get there?”

Nipper is skeptical, but he likes the idea.

“I hope I live long enough for that,” he said.

Erik Bacharach, Joseph Garrison, Jamie Munks and Mike Organ contributed to this report. Reach Tommy Deas at 615-259-8328 and on Twitter @tommydeas.

MANFRED SPEAKS:Major League Baseball commissioner names Nashville a potential expansion city

COLORFUL HISTORY:History of baseball at Sulphur Dell

Swings and misses

While Music City has had major professional sporting successes — with the Titans and Predators regularly playing before sellout and near-capacity crowds and the city landing a Major League Soccer expansion franchise — Nashville doesn’t always hit a home run when it wants something.

Twice in the past, Nashville was snubbed by Major League Baseball expansion.

Larry Schmittou, the then-owner of the Nashville Sounds minor league team, led an effort to land an MLB team when the league expanded in 1993, pre-selling more than 10,000 season tickets. Nine other cities — among them Washington, D.C.; Phoenix; Orlando, Fla.; and Buffalo, N.Y. — were considered. The league awarded franchises to the Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins.

Nashville was in the running again five years later when MLB eventually chose Phoenix and Tampa Bay as its new franchises.

There have been other strikeouts in Nashville’s sports efforts, including a failed bid to host the 1996 Summer Olympics.

What they’re saying

Here are some comments from various sources on the idea of bringing Major League Baseball to the Music City, and whether Nashville could make it work:

“If we keep getting 100 people every day the way we’re growing, I wouldn’t rule it out. I don’t think it’s going to happen in the next 10 years, but I’d love to be wrong.”

– Farrell Owens, Nashville Sounds general manager from 1978-82

“I think the city could support virtually any new endeavor. I think no matter what sport would come, it would do well. Whether that’s a year away or two years or five years or eight years away, the city’s current growth and future growth make it more and more viable.”

– Sean Henry, Predators CEO

“There’s no doubt in my mind that a baseball team could work there. It’s just a matter of getting your pieces in place and hoping that at some point either through expansion or through a team moving that it’s the place that’s chosen.”

– Dave Stewart, former World Series MVP and adviser to John Loar on his effort to bring an MLB to Nashville

“I think this is a baseball town. I would really love to see it.”

– Jerry Bell, Nashville native and former major league pitcher

“It took hockey a while to kind of get its legs here and for people to get fired up about it. Baseball being as big a sport as it is, I wouldn’t think it would take the time to create that kind of interest.”

– Country music star Vince Gill