Uncovering the past at the nation’s oldest ballpark

BISBEE — Warren Ballpark was the scene of a groundbreaking expedition Wednesday as students from Bisbee High School participated in an archeological dig in their own backyard.

University of Arizona anthropology professor Rob Schon came to the idea to do a dig at the park through his love of baseball.

“My family and I are into baseball and I was searching on the internet, and Warren Ballpark came up,” he said. “I found their website and found Mike Anderson’s book ‘Warren Ballpark’ and realized we know a lot about the players, but not so much about the fans,” he said.

I had a weird dream last night about baseball.

I was apparently working for a TV station that won broadcast rights for a MLB team. I forget what team that was but that's not important.

Anyway, we decided to take a unique approach to broadcasting the game to attract the millennial audience to our broadcasts as major league baseball has an aging following and it's difficult to attract younger people to baseball as they find it boring.

So what we were going to do was eliminate crowd noise and instead play electronica music in the background. The announcers also were to have disguises. One of them was to dress as Big Bird, the iconic Sesame Street character, and we were on the phone with PBS negotiating licensing rights to use Big Bird in this situation. I forget what character the other announcers were to play but they were to be in full costume and nobody watching at home would learn their real identities.

Also, half the screen was to be devoted to social media, so as the game progressed, viewers at home would be able to send Tweets and text messages about the game that would stream across the TV screen.

Right before I woke up, we were actually broadcasting a live game and the Big Bird announcer was interviewing Adam Ant as the game was happening in the background. It was the bottom of the 9th inning and bases were loaded with the batting team two runs behind. The batter hits a line drive triple and as all the baserunners come across the plate to score the tying and then winning runs, Big Bird is still interviewing Adam Ant, oblivious to the action on the field. Meanwhile all the Twitter feeds and text messages streaming across the screen are not mentioning the game at all. They are instead insulting each other and making fun of Adam Ants costume. I remember screaming at the broadcasters to stop the interview and get back to the action on the field but it was all for nothing. They were totally ignoring me.

Then I woke up.

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