Cooperstown’s Baseball App Is Ready for MLB’s All-Star Game

By Todd R. Weiss

Behind this opening screen, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Beacon App is filled with a wide array of historic baseball points of interest, history and fascinating facts and trivia. The 11.7MB download is presently only available for Apple iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices that are running iOS 8.0 or later. It’s optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus smartphones.

Using the app’s Interactive Maps page, travelers can see countless icons that highlight places where baseball history was made. In this image, a multitude of possibilities are found in Ohio and New York, and more are added every day.

Once a user finds an intriguing destination in the app, clicking on it brings up its name, address, distance and directions on how to get there. Here, the burial site of former Phillies left-fielder Ed Delahanty is highlighted with an icon southeast of Cleveland, Ohio.

The About page for each historic site provides more information about its significance and background. Here, the career of former Phillies great and 1945 Hall of Fame inductee Delahanty is detailed, including his stints with the Cleveland Infants and the Washington Senators.

Amid the wide range of sites in the app is the story of the Brooklyn Dodgers and their departure to Los Angeles, which still leaves a hole in the hearts of many Brooklynites. In this app page, visitors can find the location of the former Ebbets Field so they can pay their respects.

A deeper dive into the interactive map of Ebbets Field provides details of the last game played at the ballpark, when the Dodgers defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0 on Sept. 24, 1957. The game included a home run from the Dodgers’ Duke Snider, who was known as the Duke of Flatbush.

On June 21, 1964, Phillies Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning tossed a perfect game on Father’s Day at the former Shea Stadium in Queens, N.Y., which is also included as a historic milepost in the app. Bunning struck out John Stephenson of the Mets; it was the final out in the game.

On Sept. 28, 1955, Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder and baseball icon Jackie Robinson stole home in Game 1 of the 1955 World Series at the original Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, N.Y. The Dodgers ended up losing that game, but they went on to beat the hated Yankees in the Series. The daring steal is captured in the Hall of Fame’s Beacon app for users to explore.

The app also includes a special Road Trips feature that offers curated, guided road trips where baseball lovers can see and experience the sites of past baseball history. The page also suggests historic sites to visit as users plan out their own routes for baseball road trips.

Want to know more about a baseball destination? The “This Place in Baseball” tab, as shown here for Cincinnati’s former Riverfront Stadium, highlights historic games and moments in a site’s past. Just in time for the All-Star Game, Riverfront hosted two All-Star Games in 1970 and 1988, as well as the World Series in 1972 and 1975. Click the event name to get richer details.

Using the app’s My Stats page, users can keep a detailed log of every historic baseball site they have explored with the app. The page lets users check-in at the sites they visit and tracks their road trips so they you can keep a record of what they’ve seen and experienced.