Mary Quinn's cool job: National Baseball HOF and Museum director of exhibits and design

Baseball is more than America's pastime. It's a prism through which seamheads, casual fans and even friends of fans alike can connect to stories.

Mary Quinn has made a career out of bringing those stories to life.

As the director of exhibits and design at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Quinn oversees the design and overall production of permanent, seasonal and travelling exhibits. It's a job that varies by the season, of course reaching its busiest point in the spring. But it's this week when her work will be on what is perhaps the fullest display, with an estimated 50,000 fans expected to fill Cooperstown for the 2017 Hall of Fame Weekend.

"Some people think it's just the Hall of Fame plaque gallery, but we're so much more than that," Quinn, 52, said of the museum.

Quinn first arrived in Cooperstown in 1999 by way of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, nearby where she received her master's degree in museum studies and exhibition design from George Washington University. At the time, she and her husband were trying to figure out their next steps: either buying a house in Washington or making a big move. That's when she saw the posting for the job at the Hall of Fame and they ended up moving to upstate New York.

"I believe it was meant to be," Quinn said.

Raised about an hour north of where the old Riverfront Stadium stood in Cincinnati, Quinn is a diehard Reds fan. But even with a lifetime of baseball fandom and 18 years of experience at the Hall of Fame, she said she still sometimes feels like a newbie -- and that's a good thing.

"I still have a lot of ideas and we're still going, going, going," she said. "It's an exciting position to be in."

Here's what it's like to preserve the history of baseball and the stories it tells, in Quinn's words:

First induction ceremony

It was an early morning event on Hall of Fame weekend. We were setting up and some of the Hall of Famers had come in. And we were waiting for the event to start and I'm sitting -- really, seriously this was Week 1 -- between Willie Mays and Tom Seaver. And I thought, "Oh my god. I've died and gone to heaven." I knew I was in the right place.

Living history

We preserve these artifacts to tell their stories. They really take on a different life for us; they take on a different level of importance. We consider ourselves a world-class museum and we follow museum practices. We really do care about the objects and artifacts and we want to preserve them forever.

From start to finish

Being involved in the process from the minute an idea strikes to the ribbon cutting and beyond, I love managing that. I love being involved with the story, I love doing the practical stuff. To have an exhibit open and to know you influenced that from the very germ of the seed, that's pretty cool.

Baseball as America

The one that we as a group here -- from the curators to the developers to the designers -- really grew the most while working on was our traveling exhibit called "Baseball as America." That took us awhile to do. It was so involved and so painfully good. We stressed out over every word, every artifact, every bit of presentation. It really stretched and grew us as an exhibit team. It really formed how we approach exhibits now and what we find important; how we develop them, how we come up with themes, how we present artifacts and introduce media. It laid the groundwork.

We all came from the museum world -- most of us have advanced degrees in museums -- but we still had a long way to go to earn the respect in the museum world. This exhibit went to major museums all over the country, but we still had to convince some of these museums we weren't a bunch of baseball junkies up in the country. We were professionals and we knew what we were doing; we had this expertise and we could put it into an exhibit form and it was successful. That was the biggest, best exhibit that we've done yet.

Hanging with Hank Aaron

My colleague and I were in Mobile, Alabama, where we met with Hank Aaron and a couple of his siblings at his childhood home. His mother had moved to Atlanta, but left the house intact. And we were going to see if there were any artifacts we could use in our new exhibit about him. They had this family room, where we got a couple of plaques from when he was in high school. But the most amazing thing was there was no press; there were only a few people there. And we sat on his porch for probably an hour and he talked about growing up there and I thought, "This is amazing." We were just having a drink of water and he was telling these stories and I thought, "This is unheard of. Nobody gets this kind of insight."