u Nestled in the northern Catskill Mountains along the shores of Otsego Lake, Cooperstown, New York, has long been a place of legends and dreams, from James Fenimore Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales to the birth of baseball and the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
38,000 three-dimensional, baseball- related items, three million books and documents, and 500,000 photographs. The museum staff and curators sift and sort through these items (thou- sands more are donated annually) and provide visitors with rotating exhibits alongside the permanent ones. Each year museum visitors can see some- thing new—and old.
A Legendary Game Patricia Ann McNair
OME ON, Grandma. We’ve got to see every single thing!”
The boy on the main staircase of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum said as he tugged on the hand of an elderly woman. He was ten, maybe eleven, years old, and she, dressed in jeans, sensible walking shoes, and a St. Louis Cardinals T- shirt and baseball cap, obligingly scurried up the stairs with her grandson. Granddad followed closely behind. The trio wore smiles and carried an air of determination: they were going to see every single thing.
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At the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, an attempt to fulfill the task of seeing everything might be considered heroic in scope. The place is filled with an almost overwhelming number of treasures, collectibles, and bits of interesting information. This is not a collection of some hobbyist’s trinkets; what one finds here is serious (but fun) stuff, a plethora of baseball memorabilia and a collection of the stories and facts behind America’s favorite pastime. Within the museum are more than
Cooperstown, a handsome village situated in the northern foothills of the Catskill Mountains and along the shore of sparkling, blue Otsego Lake, found its way into baseball legend in 1907 when a commission was charged with finding out how and where the game first began. After doing some research, the commission proclaimed that Abner Doubleday, a decorated officer from the Union army in the Civil War, invented baseball at Cooperstown. The principle evidence is said to be a letter from a friend who told of a game said to have been organized by Doubleday and played in Cooperstown in 1839. While there had been a number of other ball games played for some time before 1839, it was this particular game’s addition of
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