Home Runs & Home Teams Opening Reception

Join us on Friday, October 24th, for the Opening Reception of our newest exhibition, Home Runs & Home Teams: A History of the National Pastime in Tennessee. Guests will experience a first look at a companion display focused on Chattanooga’s baseball past, a guest appearance from The Lookouts’ mascot Looie, and remarks and a Q&A session with longtime sportswriter Mark McCarter.

Complementary refreshments will be available as well, generously donated by Coca-Cola United and MoonPie/Chattanooga Bakery.

Home Runs & Home Teams celebrates the history of how our national pastime has played out in Tennessee. This travelling exhibition, created by the Museum of East Tennessee History, will be on view from October 4, 2025 – March 18, 2026 on the 3rd Floor of the Downtown Library. Stop by Monday – Saturday to view the exhibition in person, or visit www.easttnhistory.org/exhibitions/home-runs-home-teams for information about it online.

About the Guest Speaker
Mark McCarter was a newspaper sportswriter and columnist for nearly 40 years, including 17 years with the Chattanooga News-Free Press. He is writing his fifth book, a biography of baseball’s legendary Joe Engel, to be published in 2026.

McCarter, a Chattanooga native, covered the return of pro baseball to the city in 1976 after a decade’s hiatus and later wrote about baseball as a columnist for The Huntsville Times. He is retired – except for his writing projects – having spent the last three years of his professional career as assistant director of athletics at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

He is a member of the Alabama Sports Writers Hall of Fame and was inducted into the Greater Chattanooga Sports Hall of Fame in 2012 – an honor that, disappointingly, was for his writing and not for having led the Lookout Mountain softball league in home runs in 1985.