page_title: List of Nashville Sounds owners and executives
section_title: Owners
hierarchical_section_title: List of Nashville Sounds owners and executives / Owners
caption_attribution_description: English: Country musicians the Gatlin Brothers wearing the uniforms of the Nashville Sounds Minor League Baseball team in 1985 (left to right: Larry Gatlin, Steve Gatlin, and Rudy Gatlin)
context_page_description: The Nashville Sounds Minor League Baseball team has played in Nashville, Tennessee, since its establishment in 1978. It was created as an expansion team of the Double-A Southern League, in which it competed through 1984. The franchise moved to the Triple-A American Association in 1985 and then to the Triple-A Pacific Coast League in 1998. The Sounds were originally owned by a local group, headed by Larry Schmittou, which included baseball figures, country musicians, and businessmen. Shares in the team subsequently changed hands multiple times. Since 2009, the Sounds have been owned by MFP Baseball, composed of real estate investors Masahiro Honzawa and Frank Ward.
  In the franchise's history, 14 general managers have been employed to oversee day-to-day operations. Among the responsibilities of the general manager are overseeing ticket and advertising sales, developing corporate relationships, managing front office and game-day staff, and maintaining the team's player development contract with their Major League Baseball affiliate. The longest-tenured general manager is Schmittou with 13 years of service to the team in that role from 1980 to 1982 and 1987 to 1996.
context_section_description: Vanderbilt Commodores head baseball coach Larry Schmittou, with help from country musician Conway Twitty, put together a group of investors including other country artists Cal Smith, Jerry Reed, and L. E. White, as well as other Nashvillians, to finance the construction of Herschel Greer Stadium and the purchase of a minor league team. Twenty shares valued at US$15,000 each were issued; Schmittou purchased two shares, or 10 percent of the team, and Twitty purchased four shares for a 20 percent stake. Shares were bought, sold, and inherited over the course of the next 18 years, but the Sounds largely remained a locally-owned franchise. By 1996, Schmittou (30 percent), Walter Nipper (29 percent), and brothers Mark, Reese III, and Stephen Smith (30 percent) had become the primary shareholders, with the remaining 11 percent in the hands of six minority partners.
  Following the 1996 season, Schmittou and Nipper sold their combined 59 percent interest for an estimated $4 million to Chicago businessmen Al Gordon, Mike Murtaugh, and Mike Woleben, who operated as American Sports Enterprises. Three years later, Gordon bought out his partners, who had acquired an additional 21 percent stake from other investors, and formed AmeriSports Companies as a parent company for the Sounds and his other sports holdings. Gordon and the remaining minority partners, including the Smith brothers and Richard Sterban of the country music group The Oak Ridge Boys, sold their interests after the 2008 season to MFP Baseball consisting of New York City-based real estate investors Masahiro Honzawa, Steve Posner, and Frank Ward for an estimated $20 million. Honzawa and Ward bought out Posner's share following the 2011 season.
caption: Larry Gatlin (left) owned shares in the Sounds from 1985 to 1990.
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