Memphis Redbirds

The Memphis Redbirds are the Triple-A minor league baseball affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals. They play their home games at AutoZone Park in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. The stadium's capacity is 10,000. They entered the Pacific Coast League (PCL) as an expansion team in 1998, and were owned as a non-profit community entity until being acquired by the Cardinals organization in November 2013. The Redbirds had been previously operated by Global Spectrum, a Comcast-owned company. The purchase was completed on March 24, 2014.

The club operates a number of programs in the community. The Memphis Redbirds Foundation is a non-profit program that uses its funds to enable children to participate in sports across the Memphis area. The Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program is an instructional baseball and softball summer program for boys and girls ages 6 to 15.

Since the team's inception in 1998, the Redbirds have made it to the PCL playoffs on four occasions and won league championships in 2000 and 2009.

AutoZone Park

AutoZone Park is a Minor League Baseball stadium located in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, and is home to the Memphis Redbirds of the Pacific Coast League (PCL). The Redbirds are the AAA affiliate of Major League Baseball's (MLB) St. Louis Cardinals. In 2009, the stadium was named Minor League Ballpark of the Year by Baseball America.

History

Designed by Looney Ricks Kiss Architects of Memphis with Kansas City-based HOK Sport, AutoZone Park cost $80.5 million to build. This is by far the most money ever spent on a structure dedicated to a minor league baseball team. AutoZone Park was built to "MLB standards", but with the absence of outfield seats or food vendors far down the foul lines, making it, for comparison purposes, a major league stadium with only the 'good' seats". It opened in 2000, replacing Tim McCarver Stadium. The stadium also hosts some games for the University of Memphis baseball team, and most notably, the annual game with Ole Miss.

The Redbirds had been unique in baseball until recently, in that they were owned by a non-profit community foundation, the Memphis Redbirds Foundation; the Green Bay Packers of the NFL have a similar ownership structure. However, the Foundation defaulted on its bond payment in 2010. On November 15, 2013, the Foundation announced that the default would be remedied by the St. Louis Cardinals paying off the bonds at a discount and acquiring the Redbirds, while the city of Memphis resumes ownership of the stadium.

Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the fourth Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers.

Memphis had a population of 653,450 in 2013, making it the largest city in the state of Tennessee, the largest city on the Mississippi River, the third largest in the greater Southeastern United States, and the 23rd largest in the United States.

The greater Memphis metropolitan area, including adjacent counties in Mississippi and Arkansas, had a 2014 population of 1,317,314. This makes Memphis the second-largest metropolitan area in Tennessee, surpassed by metropolitan Nashville.

Memphis is the youngest of Tennessee's major cities, founded in 1819 as a planned city by a group of wealthy Americans including judge John Overton and future president Andrew Jackson. A resident of Memphis is referred to as a Memphian, and the Memphis region is known, particularly to media outlets, as "Memphis & the Mid-South".

Minor league

Minor leagues are professional sports leagues which are not regarded as the premier leagues in those sports. Minor league teams tend to play in smaller, less elaborate venues, often competing in smaller cities. This term is used in North America with regard to several organizations competing in various sports. They generally have lesser fan bases and smaller budgets.

The minor league concept is a manifestation of the franchise system used in North American sports, whereby the group of major league teams in each sport is fixed for long periods between expansions or other adjustments, which only take place with the consent of the major league owners. In England (and many other countries), the football leagues have many divisions below the top-flight as part of the football pyramid. In other parts of the world there is usually either a system of annual promotion and relegation, meaning that clubs have no fixed status in the hierarchy, or there is only one professional league per country in each sport, rendering the major/minor distinction irrelevant.

Nashville Sounds

The Nashville Sounds are a minor league baseball team of the Pacific Coast League (PCL) and the Triple-A affiliate of the Oakland Athletics. They are located in Nashville, Tennessee, and are named for the city's association with the music industry. The team plays its home games at First Tennessee Park which opened in 2015 and is partially located on the former site of the historic Sulphur Dell ballpark. The Sounds previously played at Herschel Greer Stadium from its opening in 1978 until the end of the 2014 season.

Established as a Double-A team of the Southern League in 1978, the Sounds were replaced by a Triple-A American Association team in 1985. The Triple-A Sounds carried on the history of the Double-A team that preceded it. The Sounds later joined the PCL in 1998. The team has served as a farm club for seven major league franchises. A total of 26 managers have led the club and its more than 1,100 players. As of the completion of the 2015 season, the team has played in 5,445 regular season games and compiled a win–loss record of 2,794–2,651 (.513).