Skip Nipper

Skip Nipper died on Wednesday 21 October 2026, aged 76, after a long battle with cancer. His death was announced by the Nashville Old Timers Baseball Association and by the Nashville Sounds, and reported by The Tennessean, NewsChannel 5 Nashville and Main Street Media of Tennessee. In his final days, with the help of his wife, he travelled to Nashville to say goodbye to several longtime baseball friends, including Larry Schmittou.

The Sounds said he had dedicated much of his life to preserving and sharing the history of baseball in Music City and would always be part of the Sounds family. His family described him as a legend in the Nashville baseball community and, above all, a beloved husband, father and grandfather and a man of faith and integrity. Retired Cumberland University coach Woody Hunt said he lived and breathed baseball. Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of the first reports.

Skip Nipper was born in 1950 and grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. His love of baseball came from his father, Virgil Nipper, who played high school and amateur baseball and had two short stints in the minor leagues. "We'd sit around the breakfast table and talk about baseball," Nipper wrote. "Every chance he got, our dad would take my brother Jim and me to the ball park. He taught us how to play the game, and he taught us to love it as much as he did. He was my hero."

He played football and baseball at Stratford High School in Nashville, and as a youngster worked in the sporting goods store owned by his uncle, Walter Nipper.

In 1976 Nipper and his father created the Virgil Nipper Co., a manufacturer's sporting goods representative agency, and he worked in that business for many years.

Alongside it he became Nashville's best known baseball historian. In 2007 Arcadia Publishing released his book Baseball in Nashville, which he dedicated to his father. It traced the game in the city back to 1862, when Union soldiers camped along the Cumberland River taught it to local residents, and covered the first professional team, organised in 1885, the Nashville Vols and the old Sulphur Dell ballpark. After the book he launched the Baseball in Nashville website and blog and later a podcast.

He was a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and its Grantland Rice-Fred Russell chapter in Nashville, and wrote for SABR's Biography Project and its books, with pieces on Sam Narron, Hank Schenz, John Mitchell, R.A. Dickey, Jack Scott, Bill "Willie" Pope, Oscar Givens and Babe Ruth's first grand slam. He presented on Sulphur Dell at the SABR 40 convention in Atlanta in 2010, was keynote speaker at the 2014 Baseball in Literature and Culture Conference at Middle Tennessee State University, and spoke at Southern Association and Negro Southern League conferences at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama.

He was a frequent contributor to The Tennessean, writing a series on the Nashville Sounds and local professional baseball in 2015 as the team's new downtown ballpark opened, and he helped the Sounds correctly identify the historic images and descriptions placed throughout First Tennessee Park, now First Horizon Park. He served as president and for many years as a board member of the Nashville Old Timers Baseball Association, helping organise its annual banquet and reunion, and was a historical adviser to the Nashville Stars, a group working to bring a Major League Baseball team to Nashville. He was in regular demand as a speaker at civic clubs, historical societies, libraries and colleges across Middle Tennessee.

Nipper lived in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, with his wife, Sheila, and their dogs, Sully Dell, named after the ballpark, and Baseball Annie. Together they had seven children and 17 grandchildren. The family is connected to Nipper's Embroidery, a family business run by his son Chris Nipper. In a 2022 interview with WPLN he said he hoped Major League Baseball would come to Nashville in his lifetime so that he could be a young boy again, taking his grandchildren to a game.

Nipper's book, website, podcast and SABR biographies remain among the main sources on the history of baseball in Nashville, especially Sulphur Dell and the Nashville Vols, and his research is reflected in the historic displays at First Horizon Park. The Metropolitan Historical Commission recognised that work with its Achievement Award in 2024.