Engel’s Replacement

Entrance to BellSouth Park, Aug-2011.

Thanks to a freeway, the seating arrangement here is unbalanced.

The view from behind the plate, which doesn’t quite include the Tennessee River.

Chronological Tour: Stop 179

• Location: Third and Pine streets, Chattanooga, Tenn. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 2000 as BellSouth Park
• Additional names: AT&T Field (2005)
• Home team: Chattanooga Lookouts, Southern League (2000-present)
• Capacity: 6,160

Rating: 2 baseballs

This choo-choo emerges for a Lookouts home run.

The river cannot be seen from the stands, although it is possible to see it from the right field picnic pavilion. Most spectators have a view of the hills on the other side of the river, however.

With the limited room in the park, most of the seating capacity was placed on the first-base line. With the batters facing to the northwest, that means most of these seats (all regular chairs except for the topmost 8 or 10 rows, which are backed aluminum benches) are in the sun – except when the sun is covered by clouds, as was the case the night I visited. On my return visit in 2021, the sun was out, and in the eyes of spectators, until the middle of the third inning. The concourse is below the seats, so you can’t order food and watch the game at the same time.

As I told a Chattanooga Times / Free Press reporter the night I visited in 2000, it’s not Engel, but it’s a good place to watch a game.

As it happens, the current park, despite its relative youth, cannot be modified easily enough to accommodate improvements required by Major League Baseball, and so there is now serious planning for a new park to open at a new setting, in an industrial area along the river (and not on a hill), for the 2025 season.