Engel Stadium

In 1929, Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators sent a young scout by the name of Joe Engel to the South to find a home for the club's first minor league affiliate. First, Engel went to Atlanta, Georgia with cash in hand to buy the Atlanta Crackers, but for reasons unknown he backed out and came north to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Engel not only bought the Chattanooga Lookouts from Sammy Strang, but also replaced their ballpark, Andrews Field with a state-of-the-art stadium at a cost of $150,000. Engel Stadium would be one of the first built with a press box, and also the only to feature a hill in center field, with "LOOKOUTS" engraved in it. Engel also featured one of the deepest center fields in the country, 471 feet from home plate, Harmon Killebrew is said to be the only man to hit it over the deepest part. 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engel_Stadium

Many of Joe Engel's famous antics also took place at Engel Stadium, gaining him the nickname, "The Barnum of Baseball." In 1931, the New York Yankees played an exhibition game at Engel Stadium against the Lookouts. During the game, a 17 year old girl named Jackie Mitchell pitched for the Lookouts, striking out Major League greats Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.[3] In 1936, a record crowd of 24,624 fans crammed into the park that only held 12,000 seats for the chance of winning a house in the middle of the Great Depression. The winning ticket was not at the game. On Opening Day in 1938, Joe Engel debuted his popular "Wild Elephant Hunt" prior to the game. It was such a success, he took it to ballparks throughout the South.

Many notables have played on the field, including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Hank Aaron, Satchel Paige, Willie Mays, Harmon Killebrew, Ferguson Jenkins, Kiki Cuyler, and Rogers Hornsby.

When the Lookouts could not find an affiliate from 1966 to 1975, the Stadium began to deteriorate. Despite amateur games being played at Engel day and night all summer long, it was not being properly taken care of. In 1972, Chattanooga News Free Press columnnist Allan Morris wrote that "paint is peeling off the walls, the floor is filthy, the roof is falling down, and it looks like a tornado hit the place." When Woody Reid bought the club in 1976 and gained a Major League affiliate in the Oakland Athletics, he hosted "Sparkle Days" at the stadium, where fans volunteered their time to fixing up Engel.

In the winter of 1988, Engel Stadium underwent its first major renovation. The $2 million project called for a new look to the exterior of the stadium, a two-story front office building built down the first base line, a new press box on top of the roof, a restaurant in the concourse with a view of the field, and a resurfaced field. "We were trying to do things in a real haphazard way," said Lookouts General Manager Bill Lee. The renovation resulted in a half-million dollar lawsuit by the Lookouts against the city and county for installing a field that did not drain properly.

In the winter of 1994, Frank Burke bought the Lookouts. Years later he would say, "Finding Engel Stadium was a bit like falling in love: initially, you don't see some of the downsides." The downside was that Engel Stadium was becoming so costly to keep up that he could not turn a profit. By 1998, the situation got so severe that Burke agreed to fund a new ballpark on top of Hawk Hill, so long as he could sell 1,800 season tickets and 10 luxury boxes for his new park by February 4, 1999. Burke met his goal a week early and the Lookouts played their last game at Engel Stadium on September 10, 1999.

Engel Stadium (with a fence reducing the dimensions of the playing field) is now leased by the city and county to Tennessee Temple for their baseball team, who have played their home games at Engel since 2000. However, the stadium is in the process of being turned over to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, which has agreed to leave the stadium intact. Since the Lookouts left, Engel has hosted high school baseball games and the TSSAA baseball playoffs---until they were moved to Murfreesboro, Tenn., to be more centrally located for all Tennessee high schools.

In 2004, the City of Chattanooga and Hamilton County agreed to turn over ownership of the entire Engel Stadium property to UT Chattanooga. The University plans to build a state-of-the-art track and field complex in the current parking lot and partner with The Engel Foundation in the restoration of Engel Stadium. On April 5, 2011 the City of Chattanooga passed an interim agreement allowing UTC to take control of the Stadium prior to the State’s approval of the deed transfer. Vice Chancellor Richard Brown announced plans to work with The Engel Foundation to restore the Stadium, which was damaged during a tornado in April 2011.

In 2012, Engel Stadium was used as the movie set for the motion picture 42, the life story of Jackie Robinson. Much of the entire film's baseball action was shot at Engel Stadium, which also doubled for Brooklyn's Ebbetts Field. On July 18, 2012 crews began demolition to restore the ballpark back to its historic accuracy after construction was done for the movie that altered the ballpark, including moving the location of the ball fields.