Cod’s Corner
By Tom Coddington
With many area high school baseball and softball seasons set to start on
March 31 (weather permitting, of course), along with the major league baseball
(MLB) season, it is only right that we return our attention to baseball for
this week’s column. A few weeks ago, it was announced that the 2008 Baseball
Hall of Fame game would be the last, after a tradition of nearly 70 years.
The announcement met with many cries of “foul!” from baseball fans
throughout the country, with most of the loudest ones coming, understandably,
from the Cooperstown area. In the announcement, it was pointed out that the
principal reason was that MLB has had “increasing problems with teams’
scheduling.”
This year’s game, which is an exhibition event, features two teams from
the National League. For most of the game’s history, the contest has been an
inter-league affair and, until recently, was held on the Monday following the
Hall of Fame’s induction weekend.
This writer’s first Hall of Fame game exposure came at the age of nine,
when a neighbor engineered the purchase of tickets for several of the players
on our local “Small Fry” team. The seats were in center field for the game
between the New York Yankees and the Cincinnati Redlegs (as they were known then),
and the big delight for many of us was watching our hero, Yankee center fielder
Mickey Mantle, blowing and popping his bubble gum.
In more recent years, the big stars on the teams have not played much,
and the game has become a showcase for minor leaguers, intent on showing off
their skills. Some of those players have made it in the “big time,” and some
have not.
Some of the luster may be off the game for this reason, but there is a
major drive to continue having the game, which has received national attention.
An organization has been formed, entitled “savethefamegame.com,” and our
legislators at the national and state levels have gotten behind it.
New York’s U.S. Senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer,
along with Representatives Michael Arcuri (whose district includes
Cooperstown), Kirsten Gillibrand and Maurice Hinchey have all written to Bud
Selig, the MLB commissioner, and Donald Fehr, executive director of the MLB
Players Association, expressing their support for the group. State Senator
James Seward of Milford, who also represents Cooperstown, has gone so far as to
ask President George W. Bush, a former owner of MLB’s Texas Rangers, to get
involved.
Kristian Connolly, a Cooperstown native who has organized the drive to
save the game, is also planning on contacting the state’s new governor, David
Paterson, but said, “I thought it might be best to give him a little time to
settle in.” Connolly’s goal is to reach everyone who shares the idea that the
game should be continued, “and help grow support for retaining one of the truly
great and pure traditions that we have left in American sports.”
Will Selig, Fehr, and baseball’s other “powers that be” listen? Anything
is possible, if the outcry is large enough! For more information, or to give
your support, e-mail Connolly at mkc1129@gmail.com,
or go to the website.