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Cooperstown Confidential by Bruce Markusen

Putting A Wrap on Hall of Fame Weekend

This year’s induction festivities in Cooperstown, NY, delivered a much-needed boost to the local economy, as large groups of Cubs and Red Sox fans spent gobs of money along the village’s Main Street. According to most estimates, about 25,000 to 28,000 fans visited Cooperstown on induction weekend—the highest figure in the last five years. In recent years, more modest crowds have generally ranged from 15,000 to 20,000 fans…

Click below for more about the Hall of Fame’s marquee weekend.In recent years, Hall of Fame weekends have been marked by lackluster crowds, in part because of a sagging northeastern economy and in part because the inductees have lacked name recognition in larger cities in the East and Midwest. This year’s new class of Hall of Famers brought sizeable contingents from both Boston, where Wade Boggs played a large portion of his major league career, and Chicago, where Ryne Sandberg played almost exclusively as a major leaguer. Surprisingly, the number of Chicago fans heavily outweighed the fans from Red Sox Nation, even though Boston is only four hours from Cooperstown. Based on an informal scan of T-shirt logos and colors, Cubs fans seemed to outnumber Red Sox fans by a ratio of 5-to-1. And that’s a conservative estimate…

Prior to the big weekend, the Hall of Fame pretty much guaranteed that there would be an induction in 2006 by announcing that a special election of Negro Leagues greats would take place over the winter. Knowing full well that the Baseball Writers’ Association of America will post a goose egg in January (Bruce Sutter, Goose Gossage, and Jim Rice will all fall short of the 75 per cent needed for election), and with no Veterans Committee vote scheduled until 2007, Hall of Fame officials decided to stage the special election in February of ‘06. Several Negro Leaguers are considered strong candidates for Hall of Fame enshrinement, with catching great Biz Mackey considered the most likely to win election. With the exceptions of Buck O’Neil and Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, most of the eligible Negro Leagues greats are deceased, increasing the likelihood that there will not be a living inductee in 2006… The Hall of Fame did excellent work in putting together a committee of qualified historians for the Negro Leagues election. The committee features most of the leading experts on black baseball, including SABR members Dick Clark and Larry Lester, and author Robert Peterson, who penned the hallmark book, Only The Ball Was White…

Amazingly, none of Wade Boggs’ former teammates in Boston, New York, or Tampa Bay bothered to attend the weekend festivities in Cooperstown this year. Although Boggs was never known for his warmth toward other players or the media, it boggles the mind that all of his retired teammates decided to become no-shows at the induction ceremony. Not surprisingly, Boggs didn’t mention a single teammate by name during his induction speech…

While the Hall of Famers become center stage for Induction Weekend, I enjoy trying to locate non-Hall of Famers who make the midsummer pilgrimage to Cooperstown. A number of former major leaguers participated in appearances and signings along Main Street, including Gold Glove outfielder Paul Blair (the best defensive center fielder I’ve ever seen), Gold Glove third baseman Clete Boyer (who looks much better a year removed from cancer surgery), former Met and Yankee slugger Darryl Strawberry, and former Brooklyn Dodgers Johnny Podres, Ralph Branca, and George “Shotgun” Shuba. Podres and Shuba are two of just a handful of surviving Dodgers from the 1955 World Championship team. The other living ‘55ers including Hall of Famers Duke Snider and Sandy Koufax (both of whom attended Sunday’s ceremony), along with infielder Don Zimmer and pitchers Roger Craig, Carl Erskine, Clem Labine, Don Newcombe, and Ed Roebuck… The Hall of Fame plans to honor the living members of the ’55 Dodgers this fall in Cooperstown…

Other notables who made it to Cooperstown for induction weekend included former commissioner Bowie Kuhn, Yankees executive Gene Michael, TV personality Maury Povich (the son of the late sportswriter Shirley Povich), and comedian Bill Murray, a diehard baseball fan and a personal friend of Sandberg…

On Sunday, Spink Award winner Peter Gammons delivered one of the best Hall of Fame speeches in recent memory. In an eloquently written address, Gammons spent little time talking about his own career, instead shifting the focus to praise the good people throughout baseball history, like Jackie Robinson (whom Gammons referred to as one of the ten greatest men of the 20th century) and Dennis Eckersley, whom Gammons called one of the best teammates ever. In referencing Eckersley, Gammons remembered a game that the Red Sox lost during their remarkable collapse of 1978. As writers surrounded backup shortstop Frank Duffy to ask him about a game-deciding error, Eckersley told the writers to take a different angle with their stories. “I think of his start in the 1978 ‘Boston Massacre,’ when it seemed that nearly a hundred writers surrounded Frank Duffy because he made an error,” Gammons said on Sunday. “[Eckersley] started pulling them off and shouted, ‘He didn’t load the bases, he didn’t hang the 0-2 slider. Get over to my locker and talk to the man who has an ‘L’ next to his name.’ Dennis Eckersley defines teammate.” …

In contrast to Gammons, Ford C. Frick Award winner Jerry Coleman offered a speech that lacked both flow and substance. On the eve of the induction ceremony, a reporter had asked Coleman about his preparations for the speech. Coleman remarked that he did not plan to read from a prepared text, but instead would rely on just a few written notes. Based on the disjointed speech he delivered, it seemed like he forgot to bring the notes…

The weekend did not come and go without some controversy. Hall of Fame infielder Rod Carew was supposed to participate in a Monday morning roundtable with the Class of 2005, Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandberg, but failed to show for the event, which was broadcast by ESPN on a tape-delayed basis. According to a Hall of Fame source, Carew was angered by a video shown during Sunday’s induction ceremony. The video, which was narrated by ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian, referred to the newly inducted Boggs as being like “Rod Carew, only better.” Not appreciating the negative comparison, Carew decided to make himself unavailable for the ESPN roundtable with Boggs and Sandberg…

One of the least-publicized events of the weekend turned out to be one of the best. On Monday, the Hall of Fame and the Major League Baseball Alumni Association sponsored a “Skills for Youth” clinic that featured a few Hall of Famers and several retired big leaguers. Although the clinic lacks the drawing power of the Hall of Fame Game (which is now played earlier in the summer), it addresses the criticism that the weekend lacks attractions for younger fans. The clinic, held at historic Doubleday Field and free of charge for kids ages 5 to 12, featured instruction by Hall of Famers Orlando Cepeda, Gaylord Perry, and Brooks Robinson; Negro Leagues legend Buck O’ Neil; and former major leaguers Fred Cambria, Steve Grilli, Bill “Spaceman” Lee, and Ross Moschitto (the onetime outfield caddy for Mickey Mantle). O’Neil, who’s now in hid mid-nineties, continues to amaze. Showing more energy than some of the most hyperactive five-year-olds, O’Neil not only offered the youngsters some basic instruction in agility, but also led the kids in song, entertaining dozens of fans who watched from the stands at Doubleday Field.

0 comments

1 Anonymous { 10.06.05 at 4:27 pm }

Do you know where I can find a copy of the ESPN2 Broadcast on Monday the first of august?
jrstik@hotmail.com

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