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Seven Days

Wednesday, Oct. 4
County Exec Tommy Schumpert rolls out the latest version of plans for new downtown jail space. They would eat up some of the lawn in front of the City County Building. Which means the cells should have the best views of Boomsday in the city! Almost makes it worth going to jail, doesn't it?
Frequently embattled Knox County Circuit Court Clerk Cathy Quist acknowledges she has applied for the position of Oak Ridge city attorney. The Oak Ridge native says she'd like to live near her mother. What, and leave show business?

Thursday, Oct.5
Local NAACP President Dewey Roberts II sends a letter to county officials questioning the county's dearth of minority employees. We're guessing he's not counting the janitorial staffs.

Friday, Oct. 6
The Knoxville Police Department recalls 300 gun safety locks it gave away, after discovering they open easily when bounced against the palm of a hand. Maybe they should check their handcuffs, too.
Knoxville resident Veronica M. Martin joins the ranks of national objects of ridicule after she files a lawsuit suing McDonald's because she says she was burned on the chin by an overheated pickle in a hamburger. She wants $110,000 in damages, while her husband, Darrin, wants an additional $15,000 for loss "of the services and consortium of his wife." Must have been a heck of a pickle.

Saturday, Oct. 7
Temperatures fall into the 30s, while the Vols lose to Georgia. So this is what hell freezing over feels like.

Monday, Oct. 9
Covenant Health Systems sues the city to block its annexation of the company's Fort Sanders West hospital. City officials say they will "vigorously defend" the lawsuit. Let's see, the city's forcibly annexed little old ladies in wheelchairs, hospitals, libraries... How about a church for good measure?

Tuesday, Oct. 10
At a compulsory meeting, 339 parents get lectures from District Attorney General Randy Nichols about their children missing school. The truants' parents could face criminal charges. Looks like Nichols, a critic of the downtown jail plans, may need that new cell space after all.
County Commissioner David Collins announces he's leaving his post as Knoxville city architect to work for powerhouse architectural firm McCarty Holsaple McCarty. Which, of course, will have no effect whatsoever on MHM continuing to pull in lucrative public works contracts.

Knoxville Found

What is this? Every week in "Knoxville Found," we'll print the photo of a local curiosity. If you're the first person to correctly identify this oddity, you'll win a special prize plucked from the desk of the editor (keep in mind that the editor hasn't cleaned his desk in five years). E-mail your guesses, or send 'em to "Knoxville Found" c/o Metro Pulse, 505 Market St., Suite 300, Knoxville, TN 37902.

Last Week's Photo:
Several entrants correctly located the monument to Abner Baker on Kingston Pike near Cedar Bluff, in front of the Baker-Peters house that bears his family name. Baker was a Confederate veteran who, at the age of 22, shot a court clerk named Will Hall. Baker believed Hall had been involved in the murder of Baker's father. The night after the shooting—Sept. 4, 1865—a crowd dragged Baker from the Knox County jail and lynched him on a tree along Hill Avenue. He was buried in the Presbyterian cemetery on State Street. A replica of his gravestone was erected in front of the family home some years later. The first correct answer came from the mellifluously named Jakira Kaos of Knoxville, who wins (just in time for election season) a copy of Molly Ivins' scathing book Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush. And because we're informed this is the first time Jakira's ever won anything, we'll also throw in a new CD single by smooth seductress Sade. Enjoy.

Meet Your City
A calendar of upcoming public meetings you should attend

KNOXVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT TOWN HALL MEETING
MONDAY, OCT. 16
6:30 P.M.
GREYSTONE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
139 WOODLAWN PIKE
KPD wants input on community concerns from South Knoxville residents.

KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL
TUESDAY, OCT. 17
7 P.M.
WHITTLE SPRINGS MIDDLE SCHOOL
2700 WHITE OAK LANE
City council will meet at Whittle Springs Middle School at the request of Councilman Larry Cox.

Goal Tender

An old Fountain City boy leads the major leagues

The winter of Todd Helton's junior year at Central High School, his baseball coach asked him to set some goals for the upcoming season.

So he did.

"We'd always handed out these goals for the kids to set, and he put down that he wanted to hit .600," says Bud Bales, who is in his first year of retirement from a 27-year coaching career that is almost certainly guaranteed to land him in somebody's hall of fame.

"I said, 'Son, you're a good hitter, but .600? I think maybe that's a little overboard.' He said 'Coach, I think I can do it.'

"Of course, that year he didn't, but the next year, he hit .657. Boys, he made a believer out of me," Bales says.

A decade later, Helton has made believers of a lot of people. In an article that appeared in the June 2000 issue of Rockies Magazine, Rockies reliever Jerry Dipoto said that Helton reminds him of the hero of The Natural, a 1988 Robert Redford movie about a supernaturally talented baseball player with a magical bat.

"I am telling you, the guy is something else. If he keeps improving at this rate, by the end, we are going to have Roy Hobbs."

That's no surprise to Bales, who first saw Helton play some 15 years ago when he was in the Little League in Farragut.

"It was out at Concord park, and Todd could hit and he could pitch. He was always the best player in his age group. In some cases, he was younger than some of the other kids in the league. Even as a 9-year-old he was playing with 12-year-olds.

"Then, when he was 13, I remember seeing him play (in the) Sandy Koufax (League) at Alice Bell, and he dominated the league."

Todd's older brother, Rodney, had excelled at both football and basketball at Central, where his uncle, Joel Helton, is the football coach, so Bales knew that the young phenom was headed his way.

"When he was a freshman, we started him out on the J.V., even though we knew he had the potential to play varsity baseball. After about a week, we had an injury, and that opened up a spot, so we brought Todd up. From then on, he led us in hitting all four years that he played.

"He stepped in that first game—we were in Fountain City playing on that little field—and Todd made a diving catch in right field; he muddied up his uniform. I think Todd wore that same uniform for all four years. He never did get all the mud out, although I don't think he put a whole lot of effort into getting it out. Every year I'd just give him that same pair of pants. That was his first game playing varsity ball."

Helton had a .412 batting average as a freshman and a .500 average when he was a sophomore on the state championship team of 1990.

"The first game of the state tournament in Murfreesboro that year, they had a big left-handed pitcher. He was a D-1 prospect, and Todd got the big hit in that game—a base hit into left field that scored the winning run—as a sophomore. He sort of carried us offensively. Chris Freeman averaged .495 that year. We had some kids who could play; we had nine players make all-KIL that year."

Helton was the number two pitcher after Freeman, and the Bobcat pitching corps gave up one hit in the district tournament that year.

The following year, Bales said, Helton "dropped down five points; he only hit .495."

He didn't play quite as much his senior year. Not because he'd lost his touch—he hit .657 and was named national high school player of the year—but because his coach sometimes feared for the safety of the opposing team.

"It was unreal. Todd Helton is the only kid I ever had hit .500 the whole time I coached at Central. To hit .500 at the high school level—those things just don't happen. And that last year, he didn't hit .657 against weak pitching. There were times I was afraid he'd hurt somebody, so some games, when they had a weak pitcher, I'd take Todd out. He understood. He was a team player, the type of kid who wanted to see his teammates do well."

Helton is well-respected by his Rockies teammates, as evidenced by the fact that he was named a player representative during his second major league season.

"He's got that ability to lead and get along with other people. Todd doesn't flaunt his accomplishments, and is well accepted by everyone," Bales says.

Helton finished this season with a major league-leading .372 batting average, and he flirted with the magical number of .400 for most of the year. Bales thinks he'll get there one day.

"He has worked so hard. All this isn't something that's just happened because he is a good athlete. He's up there with the best in the world. This year, he was the best hitter in the major leagues. It's hard to believe you got an old Fountain City boy leading the major leagues, and I really don't see him easing up any. His goal is going to be to go far beyond what he did this year. I'm sure he's looking at hitting more than 42 home runs, and I'm sure his goal is going to be to reach that .400 level.

"I can see him doing it. He will be a .400 hitter before his career is over. Todd is one of those kids who sets a goal and meets it. "

—Betty Bean

A Parkside Parkway

What will a new five-lane road do to the Smoky Mountains?

A $36 million project to turn Route 321 along the northern border of the Great Smoky National Park into a five-lane road is scheduled to begin next year, sparking fears that the park will eventually be surrounded by a Pigeon Forge-like development.

"We should be looking very, very cautiously at the idea of essentially hemming in the park with a highway that will by its nature produce a high degree of development," says Don Barger, Southeast regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, a non-profit group that advocates protecting and improving national parks. "Right now we have communities that are almost the national poster child for inappropriate development next to a national park. See Pigeon Forge."

The first phase of an eventual 22-mile project is scheduled to start next January. The 2.6-mile, five-lane leg will run from Glades Road on the edge of Gatlinburg (where the four-lane road now ends) to state Route 416 at Pittman Center. With the road bordering almost entirely park land on one side, only the other side of it would be open to development.

The project will also include 27 retaining walls to hold back the mountains the road will cut through, reroute streams, and affect wetlands, opponents says. At $36 million, it is also one of the state's most expensive current projects on a cost-per-mile basis. Opponents have seized on this, pointing out that the state will be spending more on each foot of this road ($2,727) than it did on each student in kindergarten through 12th grade in the 1998-99 school year ($2,450).

Because the road is being built without any federal money, TDOT is not required to do a comprehensive environmental impact study. TDOT spokeswoman Louanne Grandinetti dismissed the idea that the state is trying to circumvent an environmental study by not using federal money. "I don't know what anybody's trying to avoid or not avoid. Certainly if you use federal funds, you'd have to do an [Environmental Impact Statement]. But we're certainly well within state laws to build with state money, because it's a state road too." Local governments are handling the planning and engineering part of the project, she added. "We're just kind of a bystander in this," she says.

The National Park Service so far hasn't taken a stand against the project or asked for a study, and it doesn't appear likely to. Park spokesman Bob Miller says the parts of the project that are on park land (about .85 acres) will not have a major impact and will lead to some improvements.

As to whether the road expansion is a good idea, the park isn't taking a position. "We didn't look at that because we don't really have any legal leverage to decide whether it's a good idea or bad idea. We could make the comment that any road project in East Tennessee will impact the Smokies," says Miller, pointing to an increase in pollution, loss of habitat for wildlife and the disruption of migration routes that any new road produces. "The simple fact is we don't have any legal avenue to address those issues....It's not our project."

But plenty of other people are raising a fuss against the road as the groundbreaking date nears. Earth First! and the Native American Indian Movement have been staging weekly protests and demonstrations, including one at Vice President Al Gore's Knoxville campaign office last weekend.

Erik and Vesna Plakanis live about six miles from the project. The couple owns A Walk In the Woods, a hiking and backpacking guide business that educates hikers on plants, wildlife and low-impact hiking.

They blame the city of Gatlinburg for pushing the project to make room for more development. "Gatlinburg just doesn't have anyplace else to build, so they want to build down that corridor," Erik Plakanis says. "The huge impact is going to be in the subsequent economic development."

City Manager Cindy Cameron Ogle says the project has been in the works for 30 or 40 years, and she says it's being done for "road improvement and to improve access into Gatlinburg." She says it won't likely lead to much strip development because the terrain does not lend itself to that.

Gatlinburg is already strangling from heavy traffic, and Plakanis fears it's going to get worse with a five-lane road dumping more cars into the area. Further exasperating Plakanis is that there are currently two regional efforts underway to look at transportation alternatives, recognizing the Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge area as one of the biggest trouble spots. "It just seems the wrong time to go ahead with such a project that is going to be so destructive," he says.

The potential harm to the park was brought home last week, as Plakanis and his wife returned from meeting with park officials about the project. Driving on Route 321, a black bear ran out in front of his car. He had to slam on his brakes to avoid hitting the animal. The bear and other animals might not be so lucky if TDOT builds the road, he says.

—Joe Tarr