Former St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith will host the next Ball State University Electronic Field Trip April 26 at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Interested individuals can view the program at 1 p.m. by coming to Teachers College, Room 411, on the Ball State campus.

"Discovering Our American Spirit: Finding Common Ground in the National Pastime," developed by Ball State's Teachers College with the Hall of Fame and sponsored by Best Buy Children's Foundation, will turn a baseball diamond into a classroom to give students a memorable history lesson.

As part of the field trip, Smith will lead his student co-hosts in an 1860s "base ball" game, which will bring together students and players from across the United States to take the field with the New York Mutuals from Old Bethpage Village, N.Y.

Each base will represent a milestone in crafting the collective American Spirit, said Smith, who serves as the Hall of Fame's educational ambassador.

"Using baseball as the backdrop, we're going to give students a history lesson about the late 1800s and how baseball reflected, embraced and in some ways led changes in communication, transportation and society at large," he said.

The live, interactive broadcast, will air at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. EST. The broadcasts are anticipated to reach more than 15 million viewers in 49 states with captioning available through a National Captioning Institute federal grant. Information can be found at the broadcast Web site.

"We're telling teachers to button up their wool jerseys, lace up their leather high-tops and put on a pillbox cap for a turn at bat that will start every student racing around the base paths to a bygone era," said Mark Kornmann, director of Teachers College outreach programs. "We've got a front-row seat in the wooden bleachers waiting for them."

Throughout the broadcast, viewers will be able to call in with questions or submit them online in a live discussion forum. Viewers can register to receive the Internet broadcast at the Electronic Field Trip Web site or can check local cable and PBS listings.

Ball State's Electronic Field Trips earned international honors at the 2005 World Media Festival. The Web sites for "Into the Canyon" and "Where Are All the Little Green Men?" won a gold award and silver award, respectively, in the category of global competition for modern media.

The final Electronic Field Trip of the 2004-05 season is "Biological Invasion: The Introduction of Nonnative Species," May 10, from San Francisco Bay. 

Electronic Field Trip partners include the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum; Space Center Houston/NASA; the National Park Foundation; Garfield and PAWS Inc.; the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and four Smithsonian entities - The Environmental Research Center, National Museum of the American Indian, National American History Museum and National Air and Space Museum.