“I remember my dad holding me up so that I could see, putting me on his shoulders, but other than that it was just a big sea of faces.”
Witnesses to History
It was more than 75 years ago when Cooperstown would – for at least one day – be considered the baseball capital of the world. For a trio of local residents who were there, specifics of the grandest day in the small upstate New York village may have faded some, but the enjoyable memories are still there.
Cooperstown, settled in 1786 by the father of famed American novelist James Fenimore Cooper, was deemed the “Birthplace of Baseball” in 1907 as the result of findings by the Mills Commission, which was appointed to determine the game’s origin. Some three decades later, plans were under way for the village to host a four-month celebration in the summer of 1939, honoring the game’s 100th anniversary.
This summer, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum celebrates its 75h anniversary – and the quiet little town nestled between the Adirondack and Catskill mountain ranges still echoes with the sounds of history.
From May through August in 1939, Cooperstown was abuzz with baseball, with the newly-christened Doubleday Field playing host to dozens of games but also the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum holding its official dedication and first Induction Ceremony on Monday, June 12. When the day finally came, crowds, which included Homer Osterhoudt, Howard Talbot and Catherine Walker, flocked to the village to witness the once-in-a-lifetime events that forever made it part of the cultural landscape of our nation.
Catherine Walker, longtime Hall of Fame employee
“My gosh, there were more people than cows. And this was a farming community,” marveled Walker, who was only eight years old at the time and later a longtime Hall of Fame visitor services specialist. “I remember my dad holding me up so that I could see, putting me on his shoulders, but other than that it was just a big sea of faces.”
Howard Talbot, who would later serve 25 years as the director of the Hall of Fame, came with his family from nearby Edmeston. “For a 14-year-old it was overwhelming, believe me. No question about it.”
The Cooperstown of June 12, 1939, with its 2,500 or so residents, featured a completely renovated Smalley’s Theatre (“Everything new but the four walls!”), with all new seats, carpets, drapes, decorations, ventilation, sound and projection installed, and showing Cecil B. DeMille’s Union Pacific, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea, on the big screen; Danny’s Food Market, located next to the Hall of Fame, selling perch fillets for 19 cents a pound, Rheingold beer or ale for 10 cents a can, and homegrown spinach for five cents a pound (“free delivery – phone 33”); and, at the foot of Fair Street, a newly opened Otsego Lakefront Restaurant (“For those who care to dance, a floor on the porch is provided and music is furnished by an automatic record playing machine of the latest type.”).
When the big day arrived, approximately 12,000 fans, newspaper reporters from around the country and three radio broadcasters were in place at noon on Main Street in front of the newly opened Hall of Fame where the 25 electees from the first four induction classes (1936-39) were to be honored with bronze plaques.
“It was quite something that here in Cooperstown we could see some of the heroes of baseball and were able to say ‘hi’ to them,” said Osterhoudt, who as a 21-year-old documented the day’s activities with approximately 50 photographs that are now part of the Museum’s permanent collection. “It was quite a day.”
The living Hall of Fame members who attended, including Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Nap Lajoie, Connie Mack, Tris Speaker, Cy Young, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Eddie Collins and George Sisler, were considered a who’s who of the game’s luminaries from the previous half-century.
“I think the biggest thing that I remember was the fact that Ty Cobb was late getting there and he had to climb up over the railing of the stage at the start of the Induction Ceremony,” said Talbot.
For Walker, one particular player left a distinct impression.
“I was watching Babe Ruth walk up Main Street heading for the barber shop,” Walker said. “My eyes were as wide as saucers. And I remember he was surrounded with kids. The kids just gravitated to Babe Ruth – he just attracted kids. He went to the barbershop and had a shave and I remember my dad laughing because every time the barber would see anybody he’d remind them he had shaved Babe Ruth.
“I do remember that my brother had this old Brownie camera, and he was mad because he had to carry Ruth’s suitcase so he didn’t get any photos.”
Talbot, Walker and Osterhoudt, members of a small group of people known as “the 39ers,” to this day still seemed amazed when recalling what they were witnessing.
“I took a lot of pictures because none of us could believe this was happening in our town."
Homer Osterhoudt, on Cooperstown's transformation that 1939 weekend
Talbot, Walker and Osterhoudt, members of a small group of people known as “the 39ers,” to this day still seemed amazed when recalling what they were witnessing.
“It was a pretty big day for a little burg like Cooperstown,” said Talbot, who, beginning in 1951, served as accountant, assistant treasurer, treasurer, and eventually director of the Hall of Fame. “You have to remember there was no TV. It’s safe to say that at least 90 percent of the people there that day had never seen a major league game played. I know I hadn’t.”
The son of a local farmer, Osterhoudt had worked on the construction of the new baseball museum in 1937 and ’38.
“I wasn’t too much interested in baseball up to that point. I wasn’t really a baseball fan until that day in 1939,” said Osterhoudt, who was working as a clerk for Grand Union grocery at the time. “I took a lot of pictures because none of us could believe this was happening in our town. It’s really something to think of that small building and what it’s grown into.
“I was quite an event for Cooperstown. It was quite exciting to have all these notable people coming. And I just started following the thing.”
The day’s events continued that afternoon with a four-block parade down a flag and bunting decorated Main Street to Doubleday Field, where a pageant, the “Cavalcade of Baseball,” was held. It began with demonstrators appropriately dressed showing how the game evolved from its townball beginnings in the 1830s to the days of its first organized teams in the 1850s and concluded with a game played between the current stars of the game.
With the 16 big league parks closed for the day and each club represented by two players, a list that included such future inductees as Dizzy Dean, Mel Ott, Hank Greenberg, Lloyd Waner, Charlie Gehringer, Billy Herman, Arky Vaughan, Joe Medwick and Lefty Grove.
“That was the year I enjoyed the most,” Osterhoudt said. “Babe Ruth up there hitting and all of the great players – Dizzy Dean, Cy Young, Connie Mack, Tris Speaker – marching down Main Street on the way to the field.
“Over the public address system they told everyone to get off the field, but I just sat there and nobody came and said, ‘Hey, how come you’re sitting here? Get back.’ They never did, so I just sat there and took pictures.”
Opening Day of the Cooperstown Baseball Centennial celebration took place on May 6, and featured a baseball game between two of New York State’s top military schools.
“I was in Cooperstown in May for the Manlius Military Academy and Albany Academy baseball game because I was attending Manlius at the time and playing in the band,” Talbot remembered. “I came with the team and the band. They had a parade down Main Street and I was playing with the band in the parade.”
Looking back, Talbot considers events surrounding the June 12, 1939 baseball celebration in Cooperstown the biggest event in Otsego County history to that date.
“I never thought,” Talbot added, “it was something that would become a yearly thing, recognized around the world.
“I just thought it was a nice day for Cooperstown.”
Bill Francis is a Library Associate for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum