The fans speak out
When a visitor to the National Baseball Hall of Fame stands just a few paces to the right of the second floor stairway landing, he or she can grab a peek through the doorways at either end of the Museum’s historical timeline.
And with just that one look, from baseball’s origins to the left to its most current form on the right, it’s clear just how much the game has progressed – and how the Museum’s ways of portraying those changes has evolved.
Indeed, when the Cooperstown shrine was dedicated on June 12, 1939, visitors would have been hard pressed to imagine that they themselves might one day become part of the exhibits. But that is exactly what is taking place in the Museum’s newest venture, Whole New Ballgame, which features more interactivity and a greater focus on the fans than any prior exhibit at the Hall.
Trading opinions can be a big part of watching and following baseball, and while the amount of chatter certainly hasn’t diminished in the new millennium, the way in which we share our opinions has. Fans can now engage in real-time debates about something that just happened on the field in front of them, or something that happened 30 years ago. As part of its launch of Whole New Ballgame, the Museum is stepping into these virtual discussions and incorporating them into its physical space with new interactive displays.
“We want to promote conversation with this new exhibit; that’s how we’ll measure success,” said John Odell, lead curator for Whole New Ballgame. “Baseball fans love to talk about the game, and we want to know what they’re thinking about.”
The exhibit features five interactive touchscreens that address five central talking points in modern-day baseball: The Designated Hitter, Pete Rose, Labor and Management, Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) and The Future of the Game. The screens, which officially launched this spring, will invite Museum visitors to answer a series of questions to gauge their opinions on the issues. Each question may include a quote from a variety of different figures in baseball, including players, managers, executives, writers and fans themselves. Participants will then drag a slider to indicate whether they strongly agree or disagree with the quote or statement on the screen.
The questionnaires resemble popular Internet quizzes on sites like Facebook and Buzzfeed. But instead of pop culture queries – such as finding out which character on Friends one most resembles – these quizzes show the participants where their opinions sit in relation to other fans.
Rather than just having visitors read about moments in baseball history, these new interactives will help them become a part of current history. Odell added that he and his fellow curators will be regularly be checking the results.
“We will be reading this feedback and using it to populate the exhibit in the future,” he said.
Once the visitor has finished answering questions, there is still another step he or she can take to voice their opinion. Fans will be encouraged to tweet their opinions using a pre-existing hashtag, #DiamondDebates. The Museum’s curators will then collect these tweets and use them to both track the conversation and re-populate the interactives with fresh perspectives.
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For instance, the following tweet could be used to gauge whether the participant is for or against the designated hitter.
Pitchers batting is boring, a waste of DH talent, predictable, and a huge injury risk. @MLB #AL>NL #DETvsSTL
— Pete the RN (@PeteTheRN) May 16, 2015
Or whether they agree or disagree with this statement:
@bigskinny2112 I'm all for players making as much money as they can from rich con-artist MLB owners. I don't shed any tears for those guys
— Jose Franco (@JoseFranco_) May 16, 2015
So in other words, yes, your tweet could make it into the Hall of Fame.
“Every story you see online now has a comment section,” Odell said. “But really, fans have been commenting about baseball in bars and stadiums and living rooms and everywhere else since perhaps the 1850s. The Internet and social media may be the next wave we’re in, but the story is the same.
“Baseball fans will always have ideas about the game and ways to change it or improve it. And we want to show that the Hall of Fame is in the idea marketplace too.”
The Museum’s curatorial staff is hoping that the interactives – in combination with Whole New Ballgame’s video highlight walls – will encourage visitors to stay and engage with their surroundings in a way that goes beyond simply reading labels and looking at artifacts. But aside from the introduction of new technology, Whole New Ballgame is a break from the past for the Hall in the way it acknowledges topics that have historically sparked the most debate about the institution. Odell said these new displays will hopefully encourage healthy dialogue at the place where these discussions should be taking place: The home of baseball history.
“These interactives will help bring us into the mainstream,” he said. “Fans are having discussions about Pete Rose and steroids regardless, and so what better place is there to have these discussions than the place where all the artifacts concerning these issues are housed?”
Above all, Odell hopes these new displays will continue to encourage the public’s interest in the game.
“The fact is that there are a lot of fans who take a different position from what the BBWAA and the Hall of Fame have taken historically,” Odell said. “But we’re looking to provide a variety of sides because it’s fun to see and hear everything that’s coming in.
‘”Without the passion of the fans, baseball doesn’t exist. We want to recognize that and foster that discussion.”
Matt Kelly is a freelance writer from Brooklyn, N.Y.
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