Submitted photo The proposed new Johnson Park sign will have video capabilities, demonstrated here by New Ulm Legion’s Dirk Haynes.

NEW ULM — After the approval of the New Ulm Park and Recreation Commission at their monthly meeting on Monday and by the New Ulm City Council at their Tuesday, February 17 meeting, Johnson Park will have a new video baseball scoreboard.

“The scoreboard would be a video scoreboard — inning by innings — and it would also have the capabilities to put up picture of players, broadcast past plays, broadcast HUDL games,” said Al Flor of the New Ulm Baseball Association who spearheaded the drive for the new video board. “This is the only video scoreboard in the area — I have not seen one anywhere else.”

Flor said that the new video board would be the same size as the current scoreboard at Johnson Park.

Flor said that the operations of the new scoreboard are the same as the old one.

“There will be some training on the video part — when they come in to install the scoreboard there will be training for the video part,” he said. “There will be a learning curve for the video portion of the scoreboard.”

Flor said that he thinks that the scoreboard will not get put in before the start of the high school season.

“It will probably be put in during the high school season,” he said. “Our ultimate goal is to have the scoreboard in by sectional tournament playoff time.”

Flor said that there are a lot of different things that can be done with the video portion of the scoreboard.

“We are going to have to train people on the video part of the scoreboard,” he said. “Again, it will be a learning curve for the operators.”

He also feels that the new video board will very much enhance the fans enjoyment of the game.

“The new video board is bringing us in to the new generation of people who are coming to Johnson Park to experience,” Flor said. “The new scoreboard is capable of putting up cartoon duplications of ‘charge’ and other images and if you have enough time, you can put up pictures of the players if that is available — what they have done at the plate that day or batting average — it has the capability to do that and a lot of other things.”

Flor said that the current scoreboard at Johnson Park will be sold.

“We are in negotiations with other baseball communities that may be able to use it,” Flor said.