Dates

• Existence: 1885-1886, 1901-1902, 1909-1961, 1963-1965, 1976-

Biography

The Chattanooga Lookouts is a minor league baseball team that has operated in Chattanooga, Tennessee since 1909. Businessman Oliver Burnside “O. B.” Andrews and other local investors first established minor league baseball in Chattanooga by organizing the Chattanooga Baseball Club in 1908. Andrews and the other club organizers purchased a Southern Atlantic League franchise for the city, and following a fan contest to name the team in 1909, the team became known as the “Lookouts." Later that same year, Andrews moved the franchise from the Class C Southern Atlantic League up to the Southern Association, a Double-A level league, with the purchase of a Little Rock, Arkansas minor league franchise. The Chattanooga Baseball Club combined the teams under the Lookouts name. In 1929, Joe Engel, a former major league pitcher turned talent scout for the Washington Senators, purchased the Lookouts franchise, with the backing of the Senator’s owner, Clark “The Old Fox” Griffith. Engel became the owner and president of the Chattanooga Baseball Club, and the Washington, D.C.-based Senators became the major-league affiliate for the Lookouts.

As the team’s new president, Engel commissioned a new stadium to be built on the site of Andrews Field, the ballpark that had been home to the Lookouts since 1911. Construction on the new ballpark began in 1929 and was completed a year later in 1930. This new stadium was dubbed “Engel Stadium.” The first game in the new stadium was an exhibition match on March 23, 1930. Throughout the 1930s, the Lookouts won various league championships and awards, winning the Southern Association pennant and Dixie Series in 1932. Additionally, the Lookouts won the Southern Association championship in 1932 and 1939. In order to promote the team, Engel was known to orchestrate elaborate publicity stunts and opening day spectacles in Engel Stadium, earning him the moniker the “P.T. Barnum of Baseball,” or the “Baron of Baloney.” Both celebrated and notorious for his showmanship, Engel’s stunts and gags frequently antagonized players and opposing teams’ management, and on various occasions employed overtly racist themes and stereotypes, such as the 1940 opening day stunt titled “Custer’s Revenge,” in which Engel and Native American Lookouts player Woody Arkeketa performed a skit wherein Engel pretended to entrap and scalp Arkeketa as revenge for Custer's defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

In 1943, the Lookouts were relocated by Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith to Montgomery, Alabama, citing a lack of ticket-sales brought about by World War II. Now under the name the “Montgomery Rebels,” the team operated in Montgomery throughout the 1943 season. Following a successful telegram and letter writing campaign by Chattanooga fans, the Lookouts returned to Chattanooga in December, 1943. The Lookouts went on to win two more championships within their league in 1952 and 1961. With the expansion of the American League in 1960, Washington Senators were relocated to Minnesota under a new name, the Minnesota Twins. In the Senators’ place, the Philadelphia Phillies became the Lookouts’ major league affiliate.

From its establishment until the early 1960s, the Lookouts was a racially segregated team. Despite the Brooklyn Dodgers and Jackie Robinson breaking the “color barrier” in major league baseball in 1947, minor league teams in the South were slow to integrate, with some states and cities actively resisting desegregation by attempting to pass laws prohibiting integrated athletic competitions. By the early 1950s, various teams in the Texas League and South Atlantic League had begun to field Black players, while the Southern Association teams, including the Chattanooga Lookouts, remained segregated. Minor league teams, including those in the Southern Association, increasingly hosted integrated major league exhibition games in the 1950s. In Chattanooga, Engel Stadium hosted its first integrated exhibition game between the Boston Braves and the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1952. In 1954, Earl Mann, owner of the Southern Association team the Atlanta Crackers, attempted to integrate the league by fielding its first Black play, Nat Peeples. Ultimately, Peeples only stayed with the team for two weeks before he was demoted to a Class A minor league team. Between 1960 and 1961, several of the teams in the Southern Association, facing the financial cost of refusing to desegregate, folded or dropped out of the league. The struggling Southern Association disbanded in 1962, leaving the Lookouts without a league.

Without a league for the Lookouts to play in, the Philadelphia Phillies withdrew as the team’s major league affiliate, leaving Chattanooga without baseball for the 1962 season. The Phillies renewed their affiliation with the Lookouts the next year, with the Chattanooga team now playing in the South Atlantic League. This arrangement was short-lived and in 1965, following an unsuccessful season, the Phillies once again withdrew their affiliation. Struggling to maintain ticket sales and unable to recover from a steady decline in performance, the Lookouts were forced to disband in 1966.

A decade later in 1976, the Lookouts franchise experienced a revival. The Oakland A’s signed on as the major league affiliate for the Birmingham A’s, a Southern League minor league team based in Birmingham, Alabama, and moved the franchise to Chattanooga. Following the return of the Lookouts, the team saw a return in ticket sales and public interest. Over the following decades, the team operated under different major league affiliates, including the Cleveland Indians, the Seattle Mariners, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Minnesota Twins, and its present major league affiliate, the Cincinnati Reds. The Lookouts moved from the now historic Engel Stadium to AT&T Field in 2000, where they play to this day.

Citation:

Adelson, Bruce. Brushing Back Jim Crow: The Integration of Minor-League Baseball in the American South. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1999.

Citation:

Archambault, Paul. "Engel Stadium." National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2009), Section 8.

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“Baseball Men File Petition For Charter.” Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), Sep 02, 1908.

Citation:

Corbett, Warren. “Joe Engel.” Society for American Baseball Research. Accessed November 16, 2023. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/joe-engel/.

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“Chattanooga Lookouts.” Baseball Reference. Accessed November 16, 2023. https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Chattanooga_Lookouts.

Citation:

Fenster, Kenneth. “Earl Mann, Nat Peeples, and the Failed Attempt of Integration in the Southern Association.” NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 12, no. 2 (2004): 73-101. https://muse-jhu-edu.proxy.lib.utc.edu/pub/17/article/52786.

Citation:

Gammon, Wirt. “Just Between Us Fans: A Look at the New Baseball Set-Up Here.” Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), Dec 02, 1962.

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Gammon, Wirt. “Montgomery Gets Lookouts; Final game Here Tomorrow.” Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), Jul 7, 1943.

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Gammon, Wirt. “Spahn, Johnson in No-Hitter–Sneed Wins Masters Title.” Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), Apr 7, 1952.

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“Joe Engel Negotiating With Chattanooga Club Owners for Purchase of Franchise.” Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), August 7, 1929.

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“Little Rock Reserve List.” Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), December 7, 1909.

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“Lookouts Change Hands.” Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), October 2, 1929.

Citation:

Martini, Stephen. The Chattanooga Lookouts & 100 Seasons of Scenic City Baseball. Cleveland, TN: Dry Ice Publishing, 2006.

Citation:

Russell, Fred. “Chattanooga Fans Seek Lookouts Again.’” Nashville Banner (Nashville, TN), Dec 2, 1943.

Citation:

Short, George. “No Baseball here in ‘62; Phils Drop Team Agreement.” Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), Jan 27, 1962.

Citation:

Thompson, Mike and Nate Collyer. “The 'Barnum of Baseball' Meets His Match.” Chattanooga Times Free Press (Chattanooga, TN), December 20, 2019.

Citation:

Walker, Buss. “A Baseball Champion Since 1910.” Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), April 8, 1954.

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