Kepner: The home for the Hall of Fame, nestled in the past
From SABR member Tyler Kepner at the New York Times on July 21, 2019:
Steve Pindar immediately spotted the problem on Thursday morning. The night security folks at the Baseball Hall of Fame had printed out two days’ worth of scores and standings, instead of just one, for him to post on a board in front of the museum. He double-checked for the proper date.
“Occasionally they don’t give us the right ones,” Pindar said, “so we go to our trusty phones.”
The Hall of Fame welcomes around 300,000 visitors each year, and nearly all, of course, carry a trusty cellphone with access to scores of any major league game, as well as the daily standings.
Yet every morning before 9 a.m., a Hall employee — usually Pindar, the museum’s visitor services coordinator — lugs a frayed, wooden tray filled with magnetic numbers and opens the back latch of a display case marked: BASEBALL SCOREBOARD.
Even the hand-operated scoreboard at Fenway Park has lights to show balls, strikes and outs. But here there are no advertisements, no tickers for breaking news, no ways to update games in progress. This is how baseball awakens each morning, and how it remains all day.
Read the full article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/sports/baseball/the-home-for-the-hall-of-fame-nestled-in-the-past.html
Originally published: July 24, 2019. Last Updated: July 24, 2019.