The Music City Baseball group is making a major push to bring an expansion MLB team to Nashville, Tennessee, and to make history along the way.
As the American sports landscape continues to find ways to bring attention to the plight of the Black community, the group has focused on bringing the Nashville Stars – a team that spent a season in the Negro Leagues in 1942 – to Major League Baseball, which would be the first MLB team ever named after a Negro League squad.
Among other influential names, the group is led by former Boston Red Sox President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski, former St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick, and former World Series MVP, pitcher Dave Stewart.
And with MLB potentially looking to expand in the coming years, the group hopes to present a proposal to the league at the 2021 Winter Meetings, according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today.
“The people I have talked to in MLB,’’ Dombrowski said, “nobody knows what’s going to happen in the future with expansion. They can’t give you any promises, but they think of Nashville as an up-and-coming baseball city.’’
However, the Music City Baseball group's major goal is to not only bring baseball to Nashville and the Nashville Stars to baseball, but to help facilitate the first majority Black-owned team in Major League Baseball.
Not only are there no Black majority owners in the MLB, there are no Black general managers, and there are only two Black club managers – the Los Angeles Dodgers' Dave Roberts and the Houston Astros' Dusty Baker.
Stewart, who won three World Series titles during his 16-year career and has spent decades promoting social justice and equality, said that it would be the crowning achievement in his baseball career if the Stars came to Nashville.
“Of everything that I’ve accomplished in this game,’’ Stewart says, “if I can help this group pull it off, it will be my biggest achievement ever.’’
Currently, there is only one professional sports franchise that is Black-owned: the Charlotte Hornets, owned by Michael Jordan.
Two Black men – Los Angeles Lakers legend Magic Johnson and New York Yankees legend Derek Jeter – both have ownership stakes in MLB teams, but Johnson is only at 2.3 percent with the Dodgers, and Jeter is at 4 percent with the Miami Marlins.
And now, the Music City Baseball group hopes to reverse the trend.
