The team was managed by George Stallings and included other former and future major league players Frank Butler, Art Herman, Lefty Marr, Tom McCreery, Sam Moran, Bert Myers, Jim Ritz, and Mike Trost.

[7] Membership was granted to clubs in Atlanta, Chattanooga, Evansville, Little Rock, Memphis, Montgomery, Nashville, and New Orleans, thus lessening the expense of travel incurred in the past with the inclusion of cities such as Charleston and Savannah.

[18] He filled the rest of the roster with men he found to be of good character and skilled ball players, some of whom had experience on major league teams.

[23] In further preparation for the coming season, they participated in a number of exhibition games against amateur, collegiate, minor, and major league teams.

[36] With over a month's practice under their belts and optimistic about the campaign to come, the Nashville Seraphs were set to open the Southern League championship season of 1895 at Evansville on April 25.

[37] Prior to the season opener, both the Seraphs and their opponents, the Evansville Blackbirds, were paraded in carriages to the ballpark in a procession which included a brass band and a steam calliope.

[40] For the benefit of hometown fans, telegraphed descriptions of the game were announced in downtown Nashville at the Merchants' Exchange and the Grand Opera House throughout the season.

They wrapped up their opening series by taking the third game from Evansville on April 28, 9–2, in which Moran limited hitters to just two runs on four hits, improving over his first start.

A large crowd gathered early in the day to welcome the teams which arrived to the park in a parade of open carriages accompanied by a marching band.

[52] The Seraphs went five-for-five in an early June road trip, taking three games from Little Rock and two from Memphis, giving them sole possession of first place.

With only the home team taking the field, Daniels threw three strikes over the plate to Trost, and the umpire awarded Nashville the game on forfeit.

[63] By the end of June, approximately halfway through the season, Nashville was locked in a three-way tie for first place with Evansville and Atlanta, and the rest of the league was virtually out of contention.

[65] With the team in a heated race for the pennant, a number of changes in late July and early August threatened to knock the Nashvilles out of the championship picture.

[72] On July 20, "having accumulated a good supply of booze", Stallings planned to suspended Trost a second time and send him home from their road trip in Mobile,[73] but he disappeared from the team after that afternoon's game on a drinking binge.

[75] Trost continued to see playing time as catcher and at first base but did not appear in another game following the afternoon of August 9 when he was removed during the fourth inning.

[83][86][87] Nearly a week later, the team lost one-third of its pitching rotation when Stallings came to terms to sell Moran to Connie Mack's Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League.

[85] Third, they contested a number of games in which New Orleans fielded two illegal players, Ira Davis and Bobby Rothermel,[98] who were competing under assumed identities to circumvent their suspensions from the Pennsylvania State League, thus making them ineligible to play.

[97] They concurred with Nashville's concern over New Orleans using blacklisted players, but they countered that the league's rules provided for awarding such games to the opposing team rather than being nullified.

[100] The remaining Nashvillians then voted unanimously to throw out the glove game on the grounds that umpire Clark's decision to award the victory to Atlanta based on fan interference was against the league's constitution.

[99] President Nicklin, dissatisfied with the meeting's outcome, wrote to each club informing them that the league's constitution required full representation from every team before business could be transacted.

[104] One-hundred nine days after the call of the last out, the Nashville Seraphs were declared champions of the Southern League and would fly their city's first professional baseball pennant.

[105][106] While the fate of the pennant was being decided, the Nashvilles played a series of exhibition games against semi-professional teams in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and Clarksville, Tennessee, into the second week of September.

[107] In addition to Marr, Stallings, and Sweeney, other players remaining with the team at this time were Cleeve, Daniels, Herman, Knoll, Lynch, Mrzena, and Myers.

[108][109] Added to the roster were shortstop Ollie Beard,[110] pitcher Noodles Hahn,[111] catcher Jack Brennan,[112] and an unidentified outfielder Smith.

[115] Nashville merchants and the club's directors organized a benefit game for the home team with the full proceeds of ticket sales going directly to the players.

[108] The day's festivities included a game between the Seraphs and the Nashville Athletic Club, several 100-yard (91 m) dashes including one for the "slow championship" between Herman, Sweeney, and Mrzena, a boxing match between Knoll and Lynch, Stallings would attempt to break the world's record for rounding the bases, and players would compete in long distance throwing and sliding competitions.

[117] About 1,600 tickets were sold at 50 cents apiece to the September 18 benefit, which was won by the Seraphs, 4–2, when the game was called after six innings so the athletic program could be gotten in before dark.

[124] In the seventh inning of that game, Myers, upset with what he believed was an incorrect call at third base, threw the ball hitting the umpire Hoggins in the side just above his kidneys causing him to fall the ground.

[2] Located in Sulphur Springs Bottom, the land had hitherto been little more than solely a baseball field and required improvements to make it suitable for professional teams.

[134] The main Jackson Street entrance led past the ticket booth and into the grandstand's reserved seats behind home plate and a screen backstop.