Scouting Reports Help Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown

We live in a world full of social media, technology, and never-ending innovations. Being in the business of sports, it is important to keep up to date with the modern technology and social media. As we all know, athletes, teams, and leagues use social media sites such as Twitter not only to voice their opinions but as a part of endorsement deals and sponsorship promotions. Websites have been revamped over the past decade to enhance the fan experience. It is about time that the Baseball Hall of Fame joins the show.

The Baseball Hall of Fame located in Cooperstown, New York is one of the most historic hall of fames and extremely old school. It is the place to be for all fans and players of the game. Known for its rich traditions, the hall comes off a bit bland to your average baseball fan. It never had much interaction and much to offer except for its rich history. Well, due to a new exhibit and it’s on-line counter piece, traffic to hall and its website has increased by a factor of 5 times.

The exhibit, named “Diamond Mines” gives an extensive look at the often-overlooked life of baseball scouts and insight into how scouting reports are developed. The scouting reports for over 12,000 former and current players have been released in the report. Along with the multiple hits on the website, this story has received national media news being picked up by ESPN, NBC Sports, CBS Sports, Yahoo, and USA Today.

This topic is one that really resonates with fans. It is really interesting to see who was always highly scouted and which greats were surprises to the scouts. Two of the more discussed reports feature Bo Jackson and Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter. Carter was originally dismissed as “wanting too much money for the ability he has shown.”

The Diamond Mines project is something to keep an eye on over the next couple of years as the hall is putting in a lot of effort to digitize its vast collection of artifacts, documents, audio, and visual content. The heightened fan attention could lead to potential boosts in revenue sources including membership and museum attendance. Personally, this new project drives my own interest in making a trip to Cooperstown to see the Hall of Fame, but I would like to hear if other people would be more likely to attend because of the new exhibit.

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Michael Proska is a freshman at Drexel University from Springfield, PA pursuing a Sport Management degree along with a minor in Statistics. Along with being a writer for the SMTSU blog, The Sports Complex, he has an internship with Drexel Athletics in the promotions and marketing department. Michael is a member of the Army ROTC at Drexel University.  Michael is the Secretary for the SMTSU.  Follow Michael on Twitter @mikeprosk.

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