Spencer Fordin has the story at mlb.com.

Here's some of the highlights -

Even baseball immortals are still enthralled by the records of the game. That was the takeaway lesson from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum on Saturday, the scene of a new permanent exhibit designed to celebrate and sanctify the numbers and moments that have made baseball great through the years.

Three Hall of Famers -- Phil Niekro, Joe Morgan and Cal Ripken Jr. -- were on hand to participate in a ribbon-cutting for the Hall's new "One For the Books" exhibit, which tracks baseball's great records and the stories behind them.

Morgan, a celebrated former player and broadcaster, said the Hall's event was educational for him on many levels.

"I think it's great for fans. I learned a lot," he said. "I learned I was second all-time in games at second base to Eddie Collins. It's not something that I thought about or knew about. I saw that there have been 14 guys to hit four home runs in a game. I thought there were only about five or six. I saw there were a couple guys who stole seven bases in a game, and several that stole six. I didn't even realize those numbers. I think the most I probably ever stole in a game was three or four."

Indeed, the Hall's exhibit told all those stories and more, tracking some of the game's most celebrated records, and even making room for some of the most obscure. "One for the Books" contains more than 200 historical artifacts and an interactive kiosk that allows the user to track any of baseball's records from the point of inception all the way to the present day.

And it does so in an interesting way.

For instance, you may know that Rickey Henderson stole 1,406 bases during his career -- 468 more than his closest rival. But did you know that total works out to an extra eight miles of running? The exhibit is full of information like that, complete with artifacts and trivia to put the feat into proper perspective.

"The planning and the concept, and the research and development took a few years," said Jeff Idelson, president of the Hall of Fame. "We have a tremendous staff that worked diligently over the last few years to determine the stories that needed to be told and how to tell [them]. It's more than just 200 artifacts in a room. It's the contextual stories that explain why records are set and what the conditions were that really help people to understand how the times change."

The Hall of Fame enlisted the help of Sean Forman, creator of baseballreference.com, for the cutting edge centerpiece of the exhibit. Forman took one of the features of his site and blew it up into an interactive display that will allow people to sort through the game's leaders -- contemporary and historical -- in several offensive and defensive categories.

Better still, the statistics will be continuously updated through the mechanism of baseballreference.com, allowing the Hall's exhibit to reach back to the past and simultaneously look forward to the future. And it does so with pictures of the players and an engine that will allow the user to sort players by position, era or by general statistical achievement.

In some ways, said Forman, this is a natural offshoot of the site he started 11 years ago.

"Jeff Idelson invited me to a Phillies playoff game last year and mentioned the idea and what they were doing here," said Forman. "And I couldn't express my interest fast enough. We actually have a feature on our site that lets you see the leaders through history. We call it the progressive leaderboard, but this implementation blows my mind. I had to push Joe Morgan out of the way. He was kind of hogging it. But it's pretty neat. I especially like looking at how the active leaders change over time."

More than 900 donors chipped in for the exhibit, and the Hall of Fame easily eclipsed its projected target of $1.25 million in donations.

Click here for more on the exhibit.

Reportedly, this "exhibit is the most interactive in the Museum's history." That's exciting. As a father of a two, ages 7 and 9, I can tell you the kids eat this stuff up. And, as a soon to be 49-year old baseball fan, I can also share that some adults think it's pretty cool too.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 29th, 2011 at 11:37 am and is filed under Bloops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.