Tuesday night was not the first time the Chattanooga Lookouts played a season home opener at AT&T Field.
It was, however, the first time the Lookouts have opened at AT&T after holding a Southern League championship ceremony. The unveiling of the title banner, which is located behind home plate, took place moments before the start of Chattanooga’s 4-3 loss to the Jackson Generals before an announced crowd of 3,355.
“It’s a big deal,” second-year Lookouts manager Doug Mientkiewicz said. “For a lot of these kids, this will be the only chance they get to have this feeling, and it’s good to be able to put a period at the end of the story and let us move on to focus on this year.
“The last time we were on this field in a real game, there were a lot of emotions.”
Chattanooga’s championship was its first since 1988, when the Lookouts played at Engel Stadium and were in the first of 21 years as the Class AA affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. The Lookouts lost in the Southern League title series in 1995 and 1996, and they didn’t reach a best-of-five championship series again until 2014.