Baseball Hall of Fame Gate Lowest In Decades

By JIM KEVLIN


COOPERSTOWN

Attendance at the National Baseball Hall of Fame dipped to 281,054 in 2010, the lowest gate in decades and 30 percent off the peak year of 1989, when 410,070 visitors made the pilgrimage to baseball’s mecca.
Some of it is temporary, and some is the reflection of a changing, more digital world, said Jeff Idelson, Hall of Fame president, in a phone interview from Baltimore Washington International, where he was en route home the West Coast.
“You’re seeing a downward slippage in our attendance because we’re no different from the rest of the country in terms of what’s going on in the economy and employment and the price of energy,” said Idelson, adding, “There are 18 million people without jobs.”
The other big factor is “induction classes,” he said, which – except for 2006, the Cal Ripken-Tony Gwynn record year, when 84,000 attended – have lacked huge names.
While there have been many great players in the last 20 years, the Baseball Writers Association of America, which votes annually on who will be inducted, are taking a hard stand against players tainted by the steroids scandals, he said.
“You don’t know how the writers will feel about McGwire, Sosa and Clemens,” he said, but Tom Glavin, Greg Maddux and Mike Piazza are among significant stars with drawing power coming under consideration in the years ahead.
After 1989, Hall of Fame attendance slipped slightly, but, with the Major League Baseball strike, it dropped from 407,047 in 1993 to 367,255 in 1994 and 326,344 in 1995. 
Except for an upwards bump to 383,556 in 1999, during the Sosa-McGwire home-run spurt, and another in the Ripken-Gwynn year, to 352,755, the numbers have stayed under 350,000.
In 2009, attendance dipped under 300,000 for the first time in a quarter century, to 289,818, and continued the downward trend last year.
“We continually are looking at our business plan,” said Idelson.  “We’re continuing to look at ways to stay relevant in a fast-changing world.  To the degree we can control things, I feel good about our efforts to drive attend and remain relevant.”
The Hall of Fame’s agreement with EMC – “a worldwide leader in digital archiving and digital storage,” Idelson said – to digitalize the collection at 25 Main, is among the more promising developments.
“This not only allows us to rapidly begin to conserve our collections, but makes them more widely accessible than ever before,” he said.  “It opens up so many gateways for us.”
In addition to making collection accessible to pupils across the nation, it allows the Hall “to meet fans of the game in their homes, where they want to be met,” Idelson said.
In the same vein, “One For The Books,” the exhibit opening this spring, will be the Hall’s most interactive exhibit to date, allowing visitors to drill down into the stories behind the records, he said.