Padres eye game, not gizmos
New field won't be showcase for latest high-tech temptations
 | ||
Ballena Technologies Inc. | ||
It took 74 years to put lights in Wrigley Field, even longer to put a helmet on every batter, and baseball's biggest innovation in a century – the designated hitter – has caught on in only one league.
The national pastime is notoriously slow to embrace change. Yet with ballparks built in the past decade, team owners unexpectedly went Jetsons on fans, creating venues laden with enough high-priced gizmos to keep a video junkie sated.
The San Francisco Giants installed "beaming stations" so fans can download statistics into handheld computers. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays built "smart seats" with TV screens to let big-spending fans watch the game from eight angles. The Seattle Mariners outfitted 69 luxury suites with high-speed Internet access.
Each new ballpark, it seemed, tried to one-up the previous one.
Now it's the Padres' turn. And after a brief flirtation with the idea, San Diego's team has decided this is one contest it does not want to win.
If there's anything the Padres are certain of, it is that today's fans look forward to the same things fans have enjoyed for more than a century: the smell of fresh-cut grass, the crack of the bat, the taste of hot dogs and the thrill of victory.
"They don't come to a game for the feel of a computer keyboard on their fingertips," said Mike Dee, senior vice president of business affairs for the Padres.
That's the Padres' position on Opening Day 2002.
Five years ago, when the team started talking about building a new ballpark, the Padres aspired to make theirs the most technologically advanced stadium around.
The 1991 debut of the Chicago White Sox's Comiskey Park, with its "exploding scoreboard," followed by the 1992 opening of the Toronto Blue Jays' Skydome, with the first retractable ceiling, touched off a trend toward the incursion of technology into ballparks.
Since 1990, more than a dozen major league parks have opened, each boasting electronic wizardry as a way to lure the video-game and MTV generation.
The Padres' solution was to turn a downtown warehouse into a high-tech testing area they called the "BAT Lab," for Ballpark Advanced Technology Laboratory.
Companies delivered to the lab the coolest ballpark technologies they had to offer, from ticket-spewing automated machines to a system that lets spectators order food over their cell phones.
The Padres checked out the high-tech offerings, including artificial-intelligence software in which a fictional character, the "Bat Bot," could talk baseball over the Internet.
The BAT Lab seemed a natural for a high-tech city like San Diego.
"You almost get caught up in all this technology that's out there," said Mark A. Tilson, director of sales for the Padres.
A trip last year to Wrigley Field changed everything.
Tilson and others from the Padres' front office flew to Chicago to catch a game at the Cubs' intimate brick ballpark, an American icon.
"The extent of their interactive entertainment was a five-piece pep band made up of men 65 to 75 years old playing on the field in between innings," Tilson said.
"Their sound system is antiquated, but it's one of the most fantastic baseball experiences you'll ever have," Tilson said. "They have something that most places are trying to re-create. It sounds hokey, but it's true."
The Padres management returned to San Diego newly inspired.
"We wanted to be more selective, to temper our appetite for technology," said Dee, the team's senior vice president.
The Padres closed the BAT Lab soon after.
That new line of thinking reflects a 1998 poll in which San Diegans told the Padres to emphasize the basics: plentiful restrooms, wide seats and adequate parking.
Those polled didn't show much interest in computer terminals in the stands, an idea that's showing up more often at other ballparks.
The Padres were one of the first teams to try it. For the 1998 World Series, the Padres installed interactive touch screens in 300 seats so fans could view statistics, watch replays and see the field from several angles.
It didn't go over well, Tilson said. After all, who wants to be hunched over a computer screen as the game-winning run scores? Certainly not die-hard baseball fans.
For most baseball fans, technology "detracts from what makes baseball a beautiful sport," said Joe Mock, creator of the Baseballparks.com Web site and author of "Joe Mock's Ballpark Guide."
"Having a computer monitor attached to your seat, I think, is a little over the top," Mock said.
So do fans of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The ballclub has knocked $70 off the $195 price of premium seats with video screens, Mock said.
"Fans valued eating more highly than having high-tech tools at their seats," he said.
Any thoughts the Padres once had of installing computer terminals at the seats have been supplanted by less-intrusive uses of technology, such as simplifying ticket purchases and reducing long lines.
Toward that end, the Padres last year launched a test of SmartTix, a plastic card that contains a fan's season ticket information on a magnetic strip.
By using card-reading devices and personal computers, fans can transfer tickets to one another or sell tickets for games they cannot attend.
The technology addresses what the Padres say has traditionally been a big problem for fans: the selling and trading of unwanted tickets.
This summer, the Padres are rolling out virtual-reality technology to show fans the view from each seat at the new downtown ballpark, scheduled to be ready for the 2004 season.
In June, when the first wave of current season ticket holders begins picking out seats at the new ballpark, they'll be able to log onto a Web site to see the virtual-reality views.
In July, the Padres will transform the site of the former BAT Lab into a marketing center, complete with actual seats and the virtual-reality view projected onto the wall.
While the Padres plan to wire the ballpark with fiber-optic cables that could be used for a variety of interactive technologies, from cell phone games to seats with touch screens, they aren't sold on any of those.
For now, the most high-tech feature they're considering is one in which fans could order peanuts and Cracker Jack using their cell phones.
 |  |