ETHC celebrates Sam Dow, the Founding Father of Knoxville baseball
By Ken Lay
Baseball has deep roots in the Knoxville Area, which has long been home to some of the best Minor League teams in the sport.
Minor League Baseball returned to Downtown Knoxville for the first time in a quarter century in 2025 as the Smokies, the Class AA Southern League affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, are back in Knoxville after a long stint in Sevier County.
Baseball’s roots are deep in Knoxville, but just how far the sport goes back in the city’s history is up for conjecture.
The city has been home to Double-A baseball and the Southern League for decades, but the game was around before the days of Caswell Park, Bill Meyer Stadium, Smokies Stadium or Covenant Health Park and the modern game.
The game’s beginnings in K-Town can be traced back to the mid-19th century, just after the Civil War. The man credited for bringing baseball (then called base ball) to Knoxville was Samuel Billings Dow.
Dow, who brought the game to Knoxville circa 1867, and other Knoxville baseball pioneers were remembered Wednesday afternoon at the East Tennessee History Center as part of its seasonal exhibit, “Home Runs and Home Games.”
The exhibit, which celebrates baseball from its beginnings in the Volunteer State, will run through late September as it marks the return of the Smokies to Knoxville. Dr. William Hardy, the speaker at Wednesday’s lunchtime lecture, remembered Dow and his team, the Knoxville Knoxvilles and their longtime crosstown archrivals, the Knoxville Holstons.
In his presentation, Hardy attempted to answer whether or not Dow was the man who first brought baseball to Knoxville.
“A lot of baseball’s history in Knoxville was lost because the newspapers didn’t cover a lot of it, but there is an interview in 1921 with Sam Dow in the Knoxville Sentinel newspaper where Dow claims to have started baseball in Knoxville in 1865,” Hardy said. “He claimed to start the first team in the South, south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
“He was 80 years old and there were some people alive then who played the game when he did, who could call him on that.”
So the looming question is: “Was Dow the founder of baseball in Tennessee?”
“From what I can tell and from what I know, he was,” said Hardy, a history professor at Lincoln Memorial University and a former employee at the East Tennessee History Center. “He was a merchant and went to Louisville (Kentucky) with his older brother to work as a clerk in a grocery store and learn a trade.”
Dow later worked in the military as a revenue officer. He wanted to fight for the Union Army in the Civil War, but was stricken with the measles and sent home.
He founded the Knoxvilles. Baseball first came to Knoxville when Union soldiers played the game after liberating the city from the Confederates.
The Knoxvilles, who were born in a local billiard hall, played their games on Gay Street, while the Holstons played in the Cripple Creek Community.
But as time went on, the game went into other parts of the city.
“The first players who played were well-educated and probably upper-middle class and business owners,” Hardy said. “They had leisure time and they had time to exercise because they didn’t have to work from sunrise to sundown.”
Two players in the early days of Knoxville baseball were notable brothers. Both Samuel B. Luttrell and James C. Luttrell would become mayors of Knoxville.
As time went on, baseball found its way to others, and one of the Luttrell brothers passed a city ordinance against throwing baseballs because players were breaking windows in residential areas.
“If you were caught throwing a baseball, you got a $10 fine,” Hardy said.
Since a good deal of baseball’s early days in Knoxville have been lost, researching those days is an ongoing process.
“Research is never done and you never know what you’re going to find,” Hardy said.
