Reds join list of teams with halls of fame

~ The birthplace of professional baseball has a museum in its new ballpark.

CINCINNATI -- The 1919 World Series is known historically for the Black Sox Scandal, the exile of eight Chicago White Sox players from baseball for conspiring with gamblers to fix the series they were heavily favored to win.

In Cincinnati, it's also known for the Reds' first world championship. And an eclectic new display of 1919 Series artifacts offers the first extensive view of the scandal from the Reds' perspective and makes the point that the Reds were a very good team with best record in baseball that year.

"We wanted to have a sense of pride in that 1919 team, tell sort of the lost side of the story. It's always been told from the point of view of the White Sox," said Greg Rhodes, executive director of the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum.

The exhibit, which includes the ball hit by the legendary Shoeless Joe Jackson for the final out and silent-film footage of the series, has been a hit since opening in May. Impressed by the interest shown, Rhodes is looking ahead to developing a tour of Cincinnati sites connected to the scandal.

The Reds, who opened their museum in September 2004, are one of only a handful of major league teams with facilities dedicated to their history and best players. But several teams, including St. Louis, Atlanta and Baltimore, have recently expanded museums or have plans to, and the Kansas City Royals plan to build a museum at their stadium.

Paula Homan, curator of the St. Louis Cardinals' museum, said baseball fans often feel very personal connections to their teams, and want to share that with children and grandchildren.

"There's the ability to relive memories, for grandfathers to stand in front of the Stan Musial display and hand down stories of their memories of Stan Musial," she said. "There are fans who want to come into the museum and pore over every single case."

All of that is fine with the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., which has loaned out exhibits and artifacts to support individual teams' efforts to showcase baseball history in other parts of the country.

"Cooperstown isn't accessible to everybody," said Hall of Fame spokesman Jeff Idleson.

Cooperstown gets 300,000 to 350,000 visitors a year; the team sites each draw about 20 percent to 25 percent of that.

Cincinnati seems a natural spot for a baseball museum. It was here that the first professional baseball team was born with the 1869 Red Stockings. The team's history is loaded with other milestones such as the first night game (1935), the only pitcher (Johnny Vander Meer in 1938) to pitch back-to-back no-hitters, the youngest player in modern history (15-year-old Joe Nuxhall in 1944), and the breaking of baseball's all-time hit record by Cincinnati native Pete Rose (1985).

The club included a museum in planning for its new Great American Ball Park, which opened three years ago.

Rhodes said the goal for the $10 million project was a family-geared attraction combining memorabilia with interactive exhibits and themed areas in its 16,000 square feet of exhibit space.

Visitors can pitch off a regulation-sized mound to a plate 60 feet, 6 inches away, leap against an outfield wall to simulate a home run-stealing catch, broadcast their own play-by-play of Reds highlights, or pick up a phone to hear former Reds leaders discuss trades and strategy.

There are hundreds of jerseys, bats, balls and other artifacts, and eye-catching touches such as a nearly one-ton wooden replica of a bat honoring the 1869 Red Stockings and a 30-foot-high wall display of 4,256 baseballs, representing Rose's career hit total.

Rhodes says a frequent question from visitors is whether Rose is a member of the Reds' hall. The answer is no, because his ban from baseball for betting on games extends to his old team.

Rhodes is hopeful that a future baseball commissioner will allow Rose's induction into the Cincinnati hall.