Late last week, I learned that Barista Parlor was closing all of its locations except the coffee shop in East Nashville.
The original Barista Parlor, at least for me, was Golden Sound on Division Street near the Gulch. It was in a really cool building, garage door on both sides, with a lot of seating and the coffee bar right in the middle. Parking was awful there but it was a great place to get a good cup of coffee and do a little work or to meet an old friend for a catch up conversation (Glenn Brown, Andrea McCoy, etc.). When Yazoo sold their brewery and left area and their building was torn down, the handwriting was on the wall for Barista Parlor. That coffee shop lasted longer than I thought, though, with towering condominiums sprouting up all around it seemingly overnight.
The closing of the Hillsboro Village Barista Parlor on Sunday hits me hard, too. Particularly in the last year, I often finished my 3-mile runs there, grabbed a coffee, and walked home. In fact, my goal-reaching 156th 3-mile run ended at the Hillsboro Village shop and the barista who made my coffee took a picture of me with my cell phone, so I could record the moment.
It's always a little sad for me, somehow, when businesses close, even ones I don't frequent with any regularity. Why? I guess it's because I always think that a person, or a group of people, opened the business with the idea that it would be a resounding success. They had an idea, wrote a business plan, planned, held meetings, obtained financing, hired employees, and opened the doors with unbridled optimism.
Then, at some point, something changed. Their business model didn't click like they thought it would. The neighborhood changed. Covid-19 arrived. The economy fell. Or, maybe, they just didn't enjoy owning and operating a business like they thought they would.
This brings me to Harris Baseball Club and its owner, Brian Harris.
Yesterday, after I dropped Joe off at Ezell Harding for his baseball workout, I drove home on Murfreesboro Road. When I got to Wilhagen Road, I turned right without much thought and decided to visit HBC's shuttered baseball workout facility.
The first thing I noticed was that Wilhagen's Pub had closed, much to my dismay. More than 30 years ago, the first year I played ultimate frisbee, Wilgahen's Pub sponsored Nashville's Ultimate Frisbee's Summer League. Jude and I had just started dating and she convinced me to play. We all went to Wilhagen's after summer league games. I vividly recall kissing her in the parking lot one night, underneath the brightly lit Wilhagen's sign, and thinking this might be the beginning of something. Turns out, in fact, it was the beginning of the rest of my life.
Fast forward to last year and one afternoon while the 16U boys were working out, Gavin O'Rear and I walked down to Wilhagen's for a drink. That was first time in years that I had been inside and, as it turns out, the last time, as well. As I drove by yesterday and saw that it had closed, I looked on Instagram. I learned that the owner, Bill Lloyd, retired and closed Wilhagen's Pub in August after a 36-year run. Quite a run, to be sure.
Harris Baseball Club didn't have the same kind of run, in large part because Brian Harris probably wasn't cut out to own and operate a business that required him to glad hand parents, recruit boys to play at all age levels 365 days a year, and figure out which boys needed to coddled a bit and which ones needed to be cajoled.
Brian Harris is a good baseball coach, especially for boys up to age 12 or 13, but as it turned out, he wasn't a very good administrator. I think he would agree with me on that point, particularly since coaching baseball is the part of HBC he really enjoyed. I don't think he really enjoyed running a travel baseball operation. I do think, for the most part, he enjoyed giving lessons at the training facility, although about that I am not completely certain.
The point, of course, is that it made me sad yesterday when I pulled into his parking lot and saw his half of the building deserted. No HBC logo on the large garage door and a dumpster in the front where someone - maybe Brian - had cleaned out the building.
I was sad because early on, Brian had a dream, I suspect, of building a travel baseball club that was different from all or the others. Not as cutthroat, not as win at all costs, reasonably priced thought not inexpensive, and focused on developing boys as young men and baseball players. He wanted to own his own training facility, so he could have a place for his travel baseball teams to train. I think, too, he wanted to have a place where the older boys could train on their own in the offseason.
And that's what makes me sad, too. JP used to love to drive over to the HBC facility, often with Joe, and workout on his own or with Joe. I loved it that he had a place to go, to work out, and try to become a better baseball player. I'm sad that it's gone, too.
Although there were ups and down, on the field, for JP and Joe playing for HBC in the summers, memories were made that will last my lifetime and probably theirs, too. I hope Brian realizes that and doesn't see Harris Baseball Club as a failed business venture. It was so much more than that, to me and my family, and to many others.
I will never forget the trips with JP to Johnson City, Knoxville, and elsewhere. Staying in hotels and just hanging out. The games Joe played on the field I love off Nolensville Pike, tucked away and hidden from the traffic. Most of all, the trip to Cooperstown with Joe. It was beautiful, memorable, and important. All of it.
I loved every time I drove JP or Joe to a practice or picked them up, often after dark. I loved watching them, just watching them, playing baseball. I loved every single minute of it.
I miss Harris Baseball Club. I miss Brian Harris, too, and I hope he's happy and doing well.
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