UTC Baseball: From Success to Shock

UTC Baseball: From Success to Shock

United states had a new president in ronald reagan -- chattanooga's double-a baseball team, the lookouts, were thriving five years after returning to the scenic city -- and promises of a new baseball stadium lingered over utc's campus.

Just one year later, that vision faded -- the mocs baseball team went with it.

Now, close to 40 years have passed since chattanooga's division i university has played an inning of baseball.

My mission?

To find out why, and see if it's ever coming back.

On april 1, 1982, the university of chattanooga's baseball team shifted from successful and promising, to canceled -- all without a whisper of warning.

Randy smith: "i got a call from my friend, the assistant coach, which is the late stump martin, and he said, 'you won't believe this but they're dropping baseball.'

I said, 'what?!'" mark mariakis: "we really thought it was an april fools joke, you know, until we realized they were serious.

And it was just devastating."

Mark mariakis was a sophomore at the time.

He'd been recruited from east ridge high school not just for baseball -- but football and basketball, too.

He decided to stay home to play for chattanooga.

Mariakis: "i was recruited with some blueprints of the new baseball field which was going to be on the corner, right there in the middle of campus, so we were really excited about that.

So every year that i was there, we just always heard, 'hey, we're going to build this stadium.

We're going to build this stadium.

We're going to build this stadium.'" however, the school never even broke ground.

Changed plans turned first base into a parking lot -- the third base dugout into a stem center.

Mariakis: "i remember all of us just kind of sitting around the next week or so trying to figure out one, what just happened.

I mean, you're playing.

You're winning.

You're not an embarassment to the university.

And then all of a sudden, you're getting ready to play a new series, and then the program's gone.

This is it."

Smith: "i kind of shocked all of us."

Title ix has been the most commonly told reason for cutting the team.

The federal law requiring equal athletic scholarship opportunities for women was passed just 3 years prior.

Mariakis: "the excuses they gave us at the time was not title ix.

They didn't come in there and say title ix.

The first one was budget, that we just didn't have the money."

However, coca-cola then came in and said we'll double the budget.

The next reason was engel stadium's fees were too much -- to which engel said you can play here for free.

Another argument was the team traveled too often.

Mariakis: "everything that they said we had answers to, chattanooga stepped up and had answers to.

And then all of a sudden the title ix thing came out.

And then it just kind of died.

Nobody spoke about it anymore."

The mocs won 37 of 57 games that final year, and were set to return the entire roster.

Instead, half the players stayed, half the players scattered to other programs -- but all the players searched for answers.

Mariakis: "you questioned yourself.

You questions decisions.

You questioned utc.

What are you doing?

Yeah, but water under the bridge."

The mocs honored all the scholarships for those that wanted to stay.

Mariakis was one of the them.

Tune in tomorrow night for part 2 of this series.

Find out what people are saying today, in hopes of getting the pinstripes back on campus in the future.

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