Angels Offer Preview of Scoreboard System : Color Screen Won’t Debut Until Friday

One of the Angels’ latest acquisitions will make its complete debut in Friday’s game against the Oakland A’s, but fans at today’s Freeway Series game against the Dodgers will get a partial glimpse.

The acquisition is a new $6-million scoreboard system that includes a state-of-the-art color Sony Jumbotron video screen.

In addition to the color screen, there will be two 20-foot-by-40-foot black-and-white scoreboards that will display traditional ball, strike, out and score information. The boards also can show animated features. The two are located on the rim of the stadium in right field and behind home plate.

And two other new boards--one down each foul line--will show scores from around the American and National leagues.

All but the Jumbotron will be working today. John Hays, the Angels’ vice president in charge of marketing, said the team decided to showcase the new system on opening day, not during the Freeway Series.

The Jumbotron is 26-feet 3-inches by 35-feet 5-inches and is only slightly larger than the old scoreboard, but it is much improved technically.

It will show replays, baseball bloopers, crowd shots and a variety of player and game information. The old system, built in 1980 for $2 million, was virtually obsolete before it was installed. It showed replays that were, for the most part, fuzzy and difficult to view.

The new system will be shared by the Angels and Anaheim Stadium’s other tenant, the Rams.

“We were on the trailing edge and now we’re on the leading edge,” Greg Smith, general manager of the stadium, said.

Angel, Ram and Anaheim officials had talked since the spring of 1984 about replacing the old system.

“The single most asked question by fans of Angel management was, ‘When are you going to get a new scoreboard?’ ” Hays said.

Club and city officials spent much of the time searching for a way to finance the new system. The answer was to increase advertising in the stadium.

Two new “tri-vision” billboards, which rotate every few seconds flashing a new advertisement, were installed next to the color scoreboard. There also will be advertisements next to the new scoreboards in right field and behind the plate and adjacent to the boards down the lines.

The second difficulty was finding the most state-of-the-art system available.

Officials toured each major league stadium with a color video scoreboard, spoke with a number of manufacturers and chose the Sony system.

“We are very fortunate we did take our time,” Smith said. “This is the newest and latest scoreboard available.”

Said Hays: “The concept is to entertain the fans with the form that’s best known to them. And that’s the TV format, where a fan watches at home and sees replays and profiles. We take those kinds of things and transfer them right back into the ballpark. The scoreboard provides flexibility. It literally can do anything a computer can do.”

In a room in the press box, Mike McKay, the stadium scoreboard director, has been busy preparing for Friday’s opening night.

McKay has a staff of eight, which will include three scoreboard operators and a videotape operator.

Only four people were needed to run the old system.

“We spent the last three years shopping for it and I’m very pleased,” McKay said. “I think it came out very well.”