NASHVILLE, TN — Baseball was the theme, particularly with last Thursday’s MLB salute to the Negro Leagues by Major League Baseball and the passing of Willie Mays. The Nashville Stars – named for the old Nashville Negro Leagues team – helped sponsor the celebration and provided jerseys, bats, balls, posters and t-shirts for the event.
Dwight Lewis, longtime reporter, editor and columnist for The Tennessean and a member of the TSU baseball team in the 1960s, regaled the audience with his memories of watching Negro Leagues teams play in Knoxville and his stories about several of Nashville’s Negro League players.
Lewis also brought a baseball that he had signed by several of those players – Butch McCord, Jim Zapp, and Sidney Bunch – all of whom played on the Nashville Stars in the 1940s and 1950s. That same ball is signed by Chuck Meriwether, a 26-year Major League Baseball (MLB) umpire and then the supervisor of umpires for MLB, and Lewis shared the story with Meriweather’s children, Jeremy and Chris, and the entire Meriwether family. Chris’s wife Brittany is a teacher at Christ the King and was the coordinator of the Juneteenth celebration. Chuck, Sidney Bunch and the whole Meriwether family are products of St. Vincent de Paul School, with the grandchildren now at Christ the King.
