Bring the all-stars to Cooperstown
This play will make you a college basketball fan
The Front Page
Evening update
Sunday, April 4, 2021
By Ken Tingley
The tweet was one of those great ideas you rarely see on Twitter.
It suggested if Major League Baseball wasn’t going to play its All-Star game in Atlanta, why not someplace everyone loves - Cooperstown.
They once insisted that the first ballgame was played there, but that has long ago been discarded as inaccurate local lore.
If you’ve never been to Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, it is a throwback to a simpler time when ballpark diamonds were squeezed up against neighborhoods. It holds just a shade under 10,000 and I saw my share of Hall of Fame games there before the major leagues decided the annual exhibition with real major-leaguers was all too much trouble.
For a young sportswriter in Oneonta, It was my one opportunity each year to rub shoulders with major league stars. Once, when the Astros were playing in the Hall of Fame game, I was waiting patiently to ask future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan a few questions. Just as the reporter next to me concluded, a man wearing a dark suit jacket, sunglasses and an earpiece (way before the iPhone had been invented) interrupted me.
“Mr. Ryan, would you have a minute to talk to the vice-president?” he asked.
And with that, George H.W. Bush got to meet Nolan Ryan and I had to look for another story.
My favorite story about Doubleday Field comes from Roger Kahn’s book “Good Enough to Dream,” when he was trolling for a minor league franchise in the New York-Penn League to write about the experience
He settled on bringing a new franchise to Cooperstown so he would get national attention.
At the village meeting where Kahn was proposing this opportunity to the village elders, a woman asked Kahn if the team would be good.
Kahn assured her that this would be a good team filled with major league prospects.
The woman asked if they would hit a lot of home runs, especially since the fences were so close.
Kahn assured her that was indeed a possibility.
She finally got to the point and asked who would pay for all the broken windows because her house was just beyond the left field fence.
Kahn never got his team in Cooperstown.
It is even less likely that the all-stars will be coming there this year since Doubleday doesn’t have lights, or a clubhouse for that matter.
But the thought of a home run derby actually breaking some windows would be a sight to behold.
Final Four
If your not a college basketball fan, check out the the final seconds of the Gonzaga-UCLA game Saturday night.
If that doesn’t make you a fan, nothing will.
Check out the link below.
Gonzaga will play Baylor Monday night for the men’s national championship.
Story of the day
If you are going to read one story today read this one. Things have gotten so bad, that even political campaigns are scamming their own followers.
Quote of the Day
“I’ve been telling people: ‘You don’t understand. This is getting worse, not better. People are angry. And they’re angry at the truth tellers.”
- Former Republican congressman from Virginia Denver Riggleman.
Tweet of the Day
