Shortly after Jim and Cynthia Haslam returned to their Knoxville home on a winter day 62 years ago, they realized something was missing.
That something was a somebody. That somebody was their 5-year-old son, Bill Haslam.
The two had just left the YMCA in downtown Knoxville. The two had just left their youngest child behind. The family had gone there to watch Bill’s older brother, Jimmy, play basketball.
“He thought I was with my mother, and she thought I was with him, and so they left me,” said Bill, who will officially take over for Herb Fritch as the majority owner of the Nashville Predators on July 2 or 3.
Haslam paused long enough to allow the laughter to finish spilling from his bones.
“I think they got home and they’re like, ‘You got Bill?’ ” the former Tennessee governor and Knoxville mayor told The Tennessean. ” ‘No. You got Bill?’
“And so they left me there.”
“A kind adult” figured out what had happened and summoned Bill “over here with me” until his parents fetched him.
“I did figure out after a little while, ‘Hey, nobody’s here with me,’ ” Bill said.
Jim Haslam will never live it down. Bill Haslam won’t let him.
“To this day my father claims it wasn’t his fault,” Bill said.
Fate and dates
Death helped paved the way for the life Bill and Crissy Haslam have built together.
They met during freshman orientation at Emory University in Atlanta. They didn’t begin dating, though, until their junior year.
He was smitten with her. She, at first, didn’t realize it, even though three or four people suggested she give him a chance.
“I’d ask her out and she’d always be busy,” Bill said.
“I should have known something was going on, but I didn’t catch on,” Crissy said.
The two remained close friends. Eventually went on their first date, to a “Friday’s type place.”
Then came the phone call in the middle of the night.
Crissy’s younger sister, Anne Garrett, had been killed in a car accident a month before she was to graduate from high school.
Crissy called Bill. She needed to get home to Memphis.
“I called when I needed a ride to the airport,” she said. “I knew that he would understand, you know, if I was crying the whole way there because he had lost his mom and been through something similar.
“It was one of the things that for sure brought us close together.”
The ice cream man
Bill Haslam, 66, has a chocolate problem.
A “bad” chocolate problem.
“Ice cream in particular,” he said.
That much was evident when Haslam discovered there was a Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream shop within walking distance of his home in Nashville.
“At one point after we moved in, Crissy said, ‘Do you realize we haven’t spent a night here when you haven’t walked over to get ice cream?’ ” Bill said. “When you put it that way, it sounds like I have a bad habit.”
Not that Haslam’s wife of 44 years could blame him.
“Who doesn’t love that?” she said.
Bill Haslam also had a grandchildren problem. As in he can’t get enough of the 10 grandchildren he and Crissy’s three children − Will, Annie and Leigh − gave them. And they him.
“He loved being a father,” Crissy said. “He adores being a grandfather.
“I knew there’d come a day when the grandsons would appreciate Bill more than they appreciate me, but I think the granddaughters gravitate to him, too.”
Like when he is pulling them on a tube on the lake. Or when they go horseback riding. Or when they’re hanging out doing nothing. He has a running series of Monopoly games with one of his grandsons.
‘A ball that might still be going’
Boys don’t grow up dreaming of owning a professional sports franchise.
Bill Haslam was going to play center field for the New York Yankees, or point guard for the Boston Celtics.
At least that was 11-year-old Bill’s plan.
Life had other ideas for adult Bill.
A home run and a boy named Barry proved that.
The Webb School of Knoxville’s baseball team had run out of pitchers one game. The team’s coach approached Haslam, asked if he’d ever thrown from a mound.
“I go, ‘Yeah, I pitched, up until two years ago, all the time,’ ” Haslam said.
One pitch into his high school mound debut, Haslam gave up a home run to Barry Wright, whose father, Bill, was Tennessee’s baseball coach at the time.
“He hit a ball that might still be going,” Haslam said. “My high school career was one pitch on a ball that would have been out of any ballpark in the world.”
Life on a playing field, Bill figured out as that ball soared into orbit, wasn’t for him.
Little did he know, though, that 50-plus years later, he would have a life in professional sports.
As an owner.
The Haslam family, you see, has a strong sports background. A strong business background, too.
His dad played football for Tennessee and founded Pilot Company, one of the largest travel centers chains in North America. His brother owns the Cleveland Browns and Columbus Crew, and a stake of the Milwaukee Bucks.
“We grew up with a dad who was all about sports,” Jimmy Haslam said.
So when Bill heard Herb Fritch was interested in selling most of his stake in the Predators, buying that stake was a no-brainer. He and Crissy had fallen in love with the team during its 2017 run to the Stanley Cup Final. They began their purchase process in June 2022.
“Someone came to Bill and said they’re looking for a buyer, and they would love for it to be a Tennessean,” Crissy said. “We thought, ‘Well, this might be our opportunity to get involved in Tennessee sports,’ because we are passionate about that and hockey.”
The Haslams also are trying to bring a WNBA franchise to the city.
“If you asked 11-year-old Bill, would he like to be involved with a pro sports team, I’m pretty sure the answer would be an enthusiastic, ‘Yes!’ ” Bill said.
Bill Haslam goes to seminary?
Some boys do grow up dreaming of being in the ministry.
Bill Haslam was one of those boys.
“Through high school and college, that’s what I thought I’d do,” Bill said.
He planned to teach and coach in high school, then go to seminary, then work for the church.
Instead, he ended up working for the family business for 20 years before politics came knocking.
He wasn’t planning on that, either. A 20-mile bike ride in Florida changed that.
A friend of his, former Chattanooga mayor and U.S. Senator Bob Corker, was on that bike ride. Haslam had questions.
“I’m like, ‘Bob, why would anybody want to be a mayor?’ ” Haslam said.
A long conversation and some encouragement from Crissy later and some close friends, and Haslam found himself in office.
“It wasn’t like I spent my life thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to run for office someday,” he said.
It wasn’t like he spent his life thinking he’d own a professional sports franchise, either. But when the call came from Fritch, who saved the franchise from relocating to Hamilton, Ontario, Haslam couldn’t say no.
“I just wanted to make sure that asset was in good hands and protected,” Fritch said. “That was my total motivation when we started, was trying to keep the franchise here.”
Misson accomplished.
Paul Skrbina is a sports enterprise reporter covering the Predators, Titans, Nashville SC, local colleges and local sports for The Tennessean. Reach him at pskrbina@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter)Â @paulskrbina.