As the Chattanooga Lookouts prepare for their April 14 debut at Erlanger Park, it’s worth remembering the last time the team moved into a new stadium.
In the final year of the 20th century, the Lookouts moved into a new facility, BellSouth Park on Hawk Hill, former site of the Kirkman High School football field. They left behind a deteriorating Engel Stadium.
Just how much has life changed in the past 26 years? Well, one newspaper article about the Lookouts’ first official game at BellSouth noted that not everyone at that time had adopted the practice of carrying a cell phone, a fact that had created a not-so-pleasant situation for team management, but more on that in a moment.
The Lookouts played their first game in the new park April 10, 2000, against the Birmingham Barons. The first fan through the gate? Carl King Jr., who at 5:30 p.m. handed his ticket to Lookouts’ employee Sharon Christensen and headed for the grandstands, according to a story in the next day’s Chattanooga Times Free Press.