CHICAGO -- Rain delays used to be dreaded by fans at Comiskey Park. After they waited in line for a beer and hot dog, there wasn't much to do but just hope the rain would stop.
No more.
As baseball battles for the entertainment dollar against cable television, movie theaters and even video game arcades, several teams have come up with a new lure to bring fans to the ballpark.
Scoreboards that once just listed the scores of other games and the ball-strike count now are becoming entertaiment devices themselves.
At a recent White Sox game with Texas, there was a 90-minute rain delay. The excitement level of the rain delay may have surpassed that of the actual game itself.
Fans were treated to a live telecast of the game between the rival Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants. What made the event more unusual was that the announcer was former Sox broadcaster Harry Caray, whose voice was piped in through the stadium's sound system.
The Sox were able to accomplish the feat through their new, $5.5 million scoreboard called 'Diamond Vision.' It is the latest in a generation of scoreboards that not only provides animated cartoons but can transmit live pictures and instant replays from the game the fans are watching.
The White Sox version is only the latest such superboard. Others are operated by the New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers, Seattle Mariners, Minnesota Twins and Milwaukee Brewers. Several more clubs are considering joining the parade.
The structures have come a long way since the exploding scoreboards, vintage 1959 Bill Veeck, or even the cartoon projections at the Astrodome in the 1960s.
'It's fantastic, worth the investment. We're giving the fans a total entertainment package and that includes the scoreboard,' said Sox President Eddie Einhorn. 'We feel we have the best in the major leagues. The detail is outstanding.'
In Chicago's case, the scoreboard has a color picture of batters coming to the plate, outstanding fielding plays or replays of home runs. A crew of 12 people has a separate booth in the Sox pressbox to run the scoreboard.
'It's like a television studio. We're looking at various monitors to decide what to show,' said Don Williams, who previously handled the videotaping of games for the Sox. 'You have to have a director who's in charge of looking at what you've got before you put it on the scoreboard.'
Major league umpires probably saw possible trouble when they negotiated their last contract. As part of their agreement, the umpires won a concession that replays involving umpires' close calls are not to be shown.
To show they meant business, umpires recently interrupted a game at Shea Stadium to order scoreboard operators to refrain from showing close plays.
The Mets' scoreboard is also under the Diamond Vision trademark of Mitsubishi Electric Co.
The scoreboard cost less than the Sox' version -- 'only $4 million' according to the Mets -- but has an unusual feature.
It is being paid for through advertisement revenues. It has the same capabilities as the Sox scoreboard but is larger -- 24 by 36 feet - believed to be the largest scoreboard of its kind in the world.
Unlike New York and Chicago, where new scoreboards were constructed to existing structures, the New Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome opened this spring with its own large $2.2 million scoreboard.
But the scoreboard ran into as many problems in the opening weeks of the season as did the tenants, the Minnesota Twins.
'I had some video people in here this week and they said the problem is 50 to 60 percent operational. I was setting up the equipment wrong,' said Dick Davis, who worked for nearly 10 years with the Cincinnati Riverfront scoreboard. 'Once they (the crew) becomes more familiar with operating it, the quicker they will stop screwing up.'
Davis said the scoreboard crew does has a signficant responsibility in choosing what to show to fans.
'We don't want what goes on at South American soccer games to go on here,' Davis added. 'We could built a moat where the warning track is, filled with alligators, but the players would get wet.'
