“Cooperstown, a quiet, lazy hamlet in upstate New York, has never seen such a day as this.”
Where it all Began
Visitors flocked from far and wide, many arriving by car and train, some by horse-and-buggy, some by foot, and still others by seaplanes that landed on Otsego Lake. Newspaper estimates put the number of tourists in Cooperstown on June 12, 1939 as high as 20,000, swelling six-fold the population of this bucolic village nestled at the foot of the Catskills and Adirondacks.
They had come – this late spring day– to attend the dedication of the National Baseball Museum and a major league exhibition game at Doubleday Field, on the site of the old cow pasture where General Abner Doubleday purportedly laid out his diamond and invented the game 100 springs earlier. They also had come to catch a glimpse of current major leaguers like Hank Greenberg, Mel Ott and Dizzy Dean as well as the 11 living members of the Hall of Fame – a lineup headed by the legendary Babe Ruth.
The christening proved to be the high point of a four-month-long celebration of Baseball’s Centennial that saw high school, college, American Legion and professional games played at Doubleday. To ensure that the national focus would be on Cooperstown that day, MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis decreed that no big league games be scheduled.
George Kirksey, United Press reporter
A story in the New York Times described the gala as “This town’s biggest moment since Gen. James Clinton blew up the dam across the mouth of Otsego Lake in 1779.” George Kirksey, a reporter for the United Press wire service, went a step further, writing that “Cooperstown, a quiet, lazy hamlet in upstate New York, has never seen such a day as this.”
No, it had not, for on that manic Monday, Cooperstown officially became the home of baseball’s history and soul – and remains so to this day. On that day, the village and the sport became synonymous. Pilgrimages would become common place.
The day-long festival included the issuance of a U.S. Postage stamp commemorating the game’s centennial (the first one ever dedicated to a sport); speeches by baseball’s most prominent figures; a four-block parade, replete with marching bands; old-time baseball reenactments and an exhibition game between 32 current major-leaguers. It took years of careful planning by more than 100 committee members to pull it all off. The celebration was divided into two parts – one focusing on the dedication of the Hall, the other on the dedication of Doubleday Field that was billed as “the Cavalcade of Baseball.”
Special five-feet-long by two-feet-high reflecting road signs, featuring a large baseball and the words “Cooperstown” and “Baseball Centennial”, greeted visitors on all of the roads leading into the village. Pullman cars were added to the trains from New York City, Chicago and Boston to accommodate increased demand. Posters of a mustachioed Doubleday in his Army uniform adorned store windows up and down Main Street.
By the time the ribbon-cutting ceremonies commenced appropriately with the singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” shortly after noon, more than 4,000 people had shoehorned into the limited space in front of the dignitary stand on the steps leading to the Museum’s entrance. The throng included several major league players, who had spent their own money to journey to Cooperstown to take in the festivities. Many of them carried cameras and extra baseballs they had purchased from local vendors for 50 cents apiece in hopes of snaring autographs from Ruth, Ty Cobb, Connie Mack and the eight other living Hall of Famers scheduled to take part in the ceremonies. Reporters and columnists from most of the major U.S. newspapers and wire services were on hand, along with radio stations and at least six newsreel companies. (Television was still in its infancy, so most Americans received their news from newspapers, radio or the newsreel reports played in movie theaters.)
Among the spectators were several of Doubleday’s relatives, including second cousins, William Doubleday, Jr. and Laura Doubleday, each of whom still lived in the area. Cooperstown Mayor Rowan Spraker welcomed the audience from the podium near the Hall’s entrance. “Just off the shore of Otsego Lake is a rock at which – two hundred years ago – the Indians, chiefs of the Five Nations, used to gather for council,” he said. “It is known as Otsego Rock, and the word “Otsego” is said to be a compound which conveys the idea of a spot at which meetings were held. Today, as mayor of Cooperstown, I ask you all to remember that word “Otsego – where meetings were held” – and meet with us here in Cooperstown during 1939.”
A few minutes later, Landis presented scissors to National League President Ford Frick, his American League counterpart William Harridge and minor league baseball president William Bramham and asked them to cut the red, white and blue ribbons stretched across the entrance. The door then was unlocked and the key was presented to Landis. Amid a ruffle of drums, a roll of the two deceased and 11 living members of the Hall of Fame was called. Cobb, who reportedly suffered a bout of food poisoning the night before in nearby Utica, was late in arriving and missed all of the ceremony. The Hall of Fame speakers included Honus Wagner, Tris Speaker, Nap Lajoie, Cy Young, Walter Johnson, George Sisler, Eddie Collins, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Mack and Ruth. Collins, surveying his fellow Hall-of-Famers, said he “would be happy to batboy for so great a team” Pitching great Alexander joked that he would love to be backed by so potent a lineup. “I’d like to pitch for these boys,’’ he said. “I’d let (the opposing team) hit line drives all afternoon with this team behind me.”
Not surprisingly, the Bambino received the biggest ovation of the day. “Babe Ruth made the biggest hit,” wrote syndicated New York World-Telegram columnist Dan Daniel. “There were loud cheers for Honus Wagner, there was an ovation for Napoleon Lajoie, a wave of cheers for Walter Johnson. But the Babe brought the house down.”
Ruth told the spectators: “This is an anniversary for me as well as for baseball. Twenty-five years ago yesterday I pitched my first game for the Red Sox.” He was mobbed by autograph seekers once the ceremonies concluded and continued to be besieged a few hours later during the exhibition game at Doubleday Field. But Ruth wasn’t complaining. Although he had retired four years earlier, he clearly remained baseball’s towering figure. “This was like the old days – my arm got terribly tired writing so many autographs,’’ he said. “I didn’t know there were so many people who didn’t have my signature.”
Following the parade down a Main Street swollen with spectators, two reenactment games were held. The first featured boys from Cooperstown High School, clad in 1839 playing a baseball-like game known as town ball. The second game involved soldiers from the U.S. Army infantry. They dressed in uniforms of the New York Knickerbockers and Brooklyn Excelsiors, who in 1848 became the first uniformed teams to play the modern-style game.
The third game of the triple-header was a seven-inning exhibition between current major leaguers. A team managed by Wagner defeated one skippered by Collins, 4-2. The ballpark’s capacity was 10,000, but on this day roughly 12,000 showed up, so many of the fans had to sit on the outfield grass just beneath the wall.
The reviews from the press were glowing as the tiny village proved it could put on a big show.
Fred Lieb, a columnist for the Sporting News who had covered numerous World Series, said he never had been at an event that went so smoothly. In a wire story picked up by hundreds of newspapers nationwide, Kirksey of the United Press wrote: “Little Cooperstown, famed in the Leather Stocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper, had its day in the sun today when it staged a glamorous centennial birthday party for baseball.”
The village indeed had its day in the sun, and many more would follow. From that point forward, baseball enthusiasts from throughout the country and the world began making pilgrimages to the village that housed the game’s history and soul.
Scott Pitoniak is freelance writer from Rochester, N.Y.
