The way the Chattanooga Lookouts see it, why wait?
Chattanooga doesn’t begin its 2022 season at AT&T Field until an April 12 visit from Birmingham, but tickets to that and the other 68 home games were put on sale last week. March has typically been the time when the Lookouts put their tickets on sale, but this is a different era – the digital era.
“What we’ve learned over the past couple of years is that people kind of want to work at their own times,” Lookouts president Rich Mozingo said. “The biggest issue for us in the past was to get the tickets printed and in our hands. When everything’s digital, you don’t have to get tickets in your hands, and we wanted to give people the opportunity to move early and buy some dates that they wanted to buy.
“People seem to be super pleased about it, and it gives us the opportunity to start the ball rolling.”
Tickets can be purchased through Lookouts.com or by calling 423-267-4849.
The Lookouts had their 2020 season canceled by the outbreak of the coronavirus. Last season began with AT&T Field at 40% capacity, and it also started with digital ticketing for the first time in the storied franchise’s history, which led to emailed tickets and phones being scanned outside the front gates.
There were occasional challenges that were to be expected.
“We worked really hard to make sure we had a person from our ticket staff in front of the ballpark every day,” Mozingo said. “We had people hand our people their phones and say, ‘Hey, just do what you can. I know I bought tickets. It’s in there somewhere. Please help me.’
“By the time we got to August, most people had figured it out, but we saw examples of that throughout the whole season.”
Chattanooga’s home schedule this season contains 12 Friday games and 12 Saturday contests, with all 12 Friday matchups followed by fireworks. There also will be fireworks after games on Saturday, July 2, and Sunday, July 3.
“We are running wide open these days, selling season tickets and selling groups and selling sponsorships and all that kind of stuff,” Mozingo said. “I’m way busier out of the season than I am during the season. We just work really dumb hours in the season.”
Mozingo said there are still concerns at the Major League Baseball level about player access in the minors due to this ongoing pandemic and that restrictions could remain on what members of the Lookouts can and cannot do. He otherwise believes that the overall experience at AT&T Field should be very close to 2019.
How spring training plays out amid MLB’s lockout remains an unknown, but baseball is taking place this spring and summer in Chattanooga, and every passing 24 hours brings everybody a little bit closer.
“We do a countdown every day, and before Christmas you’re at 100-something days,” Mozingo said. “When you go to double digits, you start getting a little tight, and when it gets to 30 days, the butterflies happen all day every day.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.