Baseball Drafts Hollywood For Hall Of Fame Roadshow

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, an IMAX state-of-the-art, interactive road tour is being launched in spring 2016. Also partnering on the project is MLB Advanced Media, Boston Red Sox chairman Tom Werner and CAA. Arny Granat of Grand Slam Productions will also be involved.

Central to the road show experience will be a mobile IMAX theater, which the company will be building for the first time, with a 15-20 minute short focusing on the past, present and future of the game. No director has been tapped yet. “Viewers will be able to see the scope of the sport on the IMAX screen; what a 90 mile-per-hour pitch feels like coming straight at you, or how it feels to catch a ball in the outfield,” said IMAX Entertainment CEO Greg Foster during a conference call today. The road show will kick off in one of the MLB training camp states — either Arizona or Florida. In total, the tour will stop at 10 MLB cities per year for a three-week stop in each location during its first phase (lasting three years). During years four through six, the tour will stop in cities of high demand and large minor league markets.

In addition to the short film, there will be several trucks featuring artifacts from the Hall of Fame as well as interactive experiences for fans. Each set of trucks on the tour will be customized to reflect a tour-stop city’s footprint in baseball history. Historians will serve as curators for the exhibit.

Some cutting-edge features in development for the road show include:

• Putting fans in the batter’s box through digital imaging, so that one can stare down a 90+ mph fastball from Clayton Kershaw.
• Letting fans take virtual batting practice in the ballparks of their choice with their favorite Hall-of-Fame pitchers, i.e. Nolan Ryan, Phil Niekro.
• Giving fans the chance to play Rickey Henderson, trying to steal a base and beat a throw to second base by Johnny Bench.
• A 3-D virtual experience to break down the sciences behind a slider, a knuckle ball and a curve ball.
• Providing fans the opportunity to meet the stars of the exhibit— through a Hall of Fame bullpen of players, team owners, managers and scouts.
• A digital scoreboard on mobile devices that will provide information about the exhibits, guest celebrities and daily events.
• Digital photo opps where fans can create their own baseball cards and share them via social media.