Brett Young Pushes For Pro Baseball Team In Nashville, And He's 'SO PUMPED'

Brett Young is a lifelong baseball fan, and the California-born country singer is advocating for a pro team in Nashville.

Young, 40, is the newest member of the Music City Baseball Music Advisory Board, which includes fellow artists banding together in the push for a local team. Other members include Luke Combs, Kane Brown, Justin Timberlake, Maren Morris and Darius Rucker, among others. “I have always been a big fan of Major League Baseball so I’m excited about being part of bringing a team to Tennessee,” Rucker said in a statement when he joined in December 2020. For Young, the push is personal:

“Baseball was the biggest part of my life for the first 20-some-odd years of my life. For a long time I thought it's what I would do for a career,” he explained in a statement to PEOPLE, which also noted that the country singer was drafted to play for the Minnesota Twins when he was in high school. “I was very fortunate to find music and to be given the opportunity to make a career out of that, and I wouldn't trade anything that's happened in my life for the world — not even baseball being taken away — but that doesn't mean I don't still have a passion for the sport.”

If the team becomes a reality, it would be named the Nashville Stars, as a nod to Negro league baseball teams that played in Nashville in the 1940s, according to a previous Music City Baseball press release.

Young added that “the only other thing I loved as much as sports was music,” so he’d love to have a team in Nashville. The “In Case You Didn’t Know” singer just released his first holiday album, Brett Young & Friends Sing The Christmas Classics, and it’s packed with collaborations. Young teamed up with Maddie & Tae, Sam Fischer, fellow Music Advisory Board member Darius Rucker and others on the holiday album (but before Christmas festivities are in full swing, Young has to endure one Thanksgiving food he hates the most).

The country crooner and longtime sports fan said in a tweet that he’s “SO PUMPED” to join the advisory board and root for a Music City baseball team.