KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Share your story idea with Tod.
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The College Baseball Hall of Fame was founded in 2006, but it’s been more concept than reality during the last two decades.
Despite inducting 165 players, coaches and other contributors during the last 18 years, there isn’t a physical space where fans can visit the College Baseball Hall of Fame.
But that’s set to change after the College Baseball Foundation announced a partnership in January with the Museum at Prairiefire in Overland Park.
“To actually have a physical space that you can walk into and experience everything that's great about college baseball is just really, really exciting,” Tom Jacobs said.
Jacobs was announced last week as the new CEO and executive director of the College Baseball Foundation and Hall of Fame, which will occupy an 8,500-square-foot exhibit hall inside the Museum at Prairiefire.
“First and foremost, it's a home for them (the inductees) — a home for them to tell their story, to preserve their legacy,” Jacobs said of the vision for the College Baseball Hall of Fame. “That's really what the foundation and the Hall of Fame is all about. It's really our tagline — it's honoring the past, it's celebrating the present and it's inspiring the future.”
The space is mostly empty now, providing a blank canvas for Kansas City-based Populous, which has been selected as the lead designer to bring an interactive space to life.
Jacobs said the new hall of fame will not only recognize and catalog the growing list of inductees — including the 2024 class, which was announced last week and includes Mike Schmidt and Roger Clemens — but it will also be a celebration of college baseball.
“Once we get through phase one (the concept and design phase), which will take a few months here, then we'll have a better idea of what the scope is,” Jacobs said. “It's going to be a mixture of representing the Hall of Famers, the [College Baseball Foundation’s] annual award winners, but also kind of telling the story about college baseball with some different interactive types of things as well.”
Next, the foundation will embark on a multi-million capital campaign — for which, Jacobs said, Patrick and Brittany Mahomes have served as lead donors — to make the College Baseball Hall of Fame a brick-and-mortar reality for the first time.
“We've got a target or a goal of $12 million that we want and need to raise to make the Hall of Fame a reality and to do it — to do it right, to do it at a really high level and one that's going to be not only historical but fun and engaging,” Jacobs said. “That's the process that we're in now.”
Jacobs, a Shawnee Mission North and University of Kansas graduate who now resides in Virginia, said the College Baseball Hall of Fame hopes to open in the first quarter of 2026, which is roughly 18 months from now.
He said he’s excited to join Kansas City’s robust sports scene, including the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
“Any sports fan, baseball fan, history fan, coming to Kansas City — that should be a dual ticket to visit both the Negro Leagues [Baseball] Museum and also to visit the College Baseball Hall of Fame,” Jacobs said.
The 2024 Night of Champions, featuring the 2024 Hall of Fame class induction, will take place Feb. 13, 2025, at the Overland Park Marriott.
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