EngePs Experiment

At Mt. St. Mary's College, 30 years ago, Joe Engel pitched a perfect (no-man-to-reach-first) baseball game. Grabbed by the Washington Senators, his pitching went sour. Manager Clark Griffith shooed Engel off to the minor-league Minneapolis Millers, told him to swap himself for someone who could play ball. Engel looked the Millers over, sent back Ed Gharrity, a big rawboned catcher. Gharrity turned out to be so good that Engel was hired to scout for Washington.

Since that day, jovial Joe Engel has probably discovered more big-time baseballers than any other scout in the business. He dug up Goose Goslin, Alvin Crowder, Bump Hadley, Buddy Myer, Cecil Travis, Bucky Harris. He also unearthed Joe Cronin, picked up in Kansas City for $7,500 and sold seven years later --after he had become the Senators' manager and married the boss's daughter -- to the Boston Red Sox for $250,000. Engel's "finds" helped bring Washington three pennants in ten years.

But to the average bleacherite, Joe Engel is best known in another capacity, as the Barnum of Baseball. During the past ten years, ever since he was put in charge of the Senators' Chattanooga farm club, strange tales have floated up from the Tennessee hills. On opening day, Engel had his players parade into the ball park on elephants. He traded a shortstop for a turkey, roasted it and served it to local sportswriters who had been "giving him the bird." He raffled off houses and automobiles, had canaries singing in the grand stands. When the New York Yankees went to Chattanooga to play a pre-season exhibition game with his Lookouts, Engel dug up a girl pitcher who struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

Chattanoogans liked these monkeyshines. They poured into the park until the fences bulged. In 1932 the Lookouts won the Southern Association pennant for the first time in 40 years, beat the Texas League champions in the Dixie Series. Three years ago Joe Engel decided that he wanted to buy the Lookouts. He did not have enough cash. So he got 1,700 fans to chip in, buy the club for $125,000. That year, attendance tripled. The fan-owned Lookouts made a profit of $50,000. The following year Chattanooga won another pennant. But last summer, lured by the intriguing water sports at newly opened TVA Chickamauga Dam, only seven miles outside the city, Chattanoogans deserted Engel Stadium in droves.

Last week the club's directors--which include a city judge, a football coach, a theatre manager and a banker--admitted that they were broke and unable to carry on, agreed to let the Washington Senators, holders of a $40,000 mortgage, take back the Lookouts--unless President Engel can scare up the $20,000 necessary to operate for another year.

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