David Carroll, one of Chattanooga’s great TV and radio broadcasters and a friend for 40 years, was steering me down memory lane today. The subject was the various notable people who, sometimes just at random, found their way into Chattanooga.
So, a short anecdote:
Ed Holtz was the Chattanooga Lookouts’ general manager back in the early 1980s. Great guy, affable, hard-working. He had to deal with the challenge of an old ballpark, ownership transition and the dying out of any novelty affect that baseball’s return in 1976 prompted. Ed had a signature bit of attire: He always wore a Mickey Mouse T-shirt under his “real” shirt. Which often meant Mickey was easily spotted underneath a white golf shirt.
Anyway, I was in the press box at Engel Stadium one night when Ed and Mickey came up behind me.
“I need you to come downstairs,” he said. “There’s somebody I need you to meet.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Karolyn Rose,” he said. (This was well before her son, Pete Rose Jr., would become a Chattanooga Lookout.)
“Ed, do I have to?”
“Yeah, you need to see her. She was just driving through town and found out there was a ball game.”
Then I pleaded, “Ed, I really don’t care much for Pete Rose.”
To which he responded, “Then you two will really hit it off.”
