MLB assures Lookouts, minors a full 2022 season

The Chattanooga Lookouts will be playing ball next spring and summer, regardless of what transpires at the big-league level.

Major League Baseball announced Monday that it would be committed to a full minor league season amid the uncertainty of the bigleague lockout that began last week. The Lookouts will start their 2022 schedule on April 8 at Tennessee before opening their home schedule April 12 against Birmingham.

Chattanooga is set to play 138 games, with 69 scheduled for AT&T Field.

“We kind of expected that and were kind of planning on that for the time being,” Lookouts president Rich Mozingo, who is attending baseball’s winter meetings in Orlando, said Monday afternoon via phone. “The guys who play for us are not on the 40-man roster, and we knew that going back to 1994, when we had this same scenario — we thought for sure that Major League Baseball would do exactly what they did then.

“It’s good news for us, and it’s good news for our fans to at least hear it from Major League Baseball that they are planning on no disruptions at all at our level.”

Mozingo was the director of group sales for the Lookouts in 1994, when the MLB strike canceled the World Series.

The winter meetings are being held without MLB representatives due to the lockout. They began Monday morning and will run through Wednesday afternoon.

“To be honest, it’s not all that different from how it’s been in the past,” Mozingo said. “We would have some sort of Cincinnati Reds event, a cocktail party or something, but outside of that, the major leagues and minor leagues have been separate down here.”