Editorial of July 31, 2025
Sunday in the Park
It’s over. Another milestone is in our collective pocket. Last weekend, here in Cooperstown, we, and a healthy number of visitors, once again celebrated a handful of very accomplished athletes as they were inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, an event that—along with all the trimmings that have evolved and developed and been perfected as the years have crept by—is able each year to grab the attention of a multitude of baseball fans as well as, of course, those particular fans who spend a good part of their lives cheering for, and probably these days betting on, the specific teams of the inductees.
The Class of 2025, which consists of a substantial handful of great baseball athletes, was duly honored last Sunday, in between occasional drizzles and a fiercely hot sun. Three singular stars—CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki and Billy Wagner—stepped up to plate before an immense national television audience, beside 52 returning Hall of Famers and in front of thousands of baseball fans (the crowd was estimated at 30,000) in a ceremony that honored their lifetime achievements and exemplary devotion to the sport.
Two other champions, now deceased, also entered the hall: first baseman Dave Allen, representing the Philadelphia Phillies, and Dave Parker, who played right field, went in for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Their five plaques will join those of their many talented fellow players in the well-visited Plaque Gallery at the Hall of Fame. Their wide-ranging and intriguing acceptance speeches, well-conceived and delivered with care, sensitivity, and emotion, were received with gusto equal to the cacaphony that emanates in the outfields of many a major league game. Sabathia, who pitched for the Yankees, and Suzuki, a right fielder for the Mariners, were both elected on the first ballot of the Baseball Writers Association of America; for Wagner, a reliever for the Astros, it was on his tenth (and final) ballot. The vote for Suzuki, the first Hall of Famer who was born in Japan, fell one short of unanimous. Allan and Parker were elected by the Classic Baseball Era Committee.
The sun broke its bright head through the clouds to close the Induction ceremony, now in its 90th year (the first induction, of Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner and Ty Cobb, was in 1936), with close to 10 hiatuses for the likes of wars, failures to garner the necessary 75 percent of the votes, and pandemics), and the multitude departed our little village, leaving once more its 1,794 residents—the fewest since before the 1880s— and their quiet streets, unlittered sidewalks, shops, restaurants, newly rutted parking lawns, serene golf course and signature lake.
Congratulations to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, now 11 years short of a century old, from “The Freeman’s Journal,” around now for 217 years, including all those illustrious ceremonies. We hope that the shops and restaurants benefitted from our visitors; we know the parking lawns did; the old $10.00 and $20.00 rates for a day’s parking have given way to $60.00. How very quickly our village cleans itself up—thank you village people, thank you State Troopers, thank you security, thank you fire department, thank you police.
Just as what happened this month in France, where millions of fans lined the narrow roadways of the 21 stages of the Tour de France to cheer on the riders as they careened through the mountains and scenic villages, the many baseball fans who dropped in to Cooperstown for the weekend represent all sides of our political, moral, social, economic and academic spectrum. They come together here to celebrate not their differences, but their common ground. They are one voice, neither red nor blue, from near and far away, and they and their enthusiasm, and we and our tiny village, all worked together to give the Hall of Famers a near-perfect weekend. It happened in France, too, as the four-time winner of the Tour, Tadej Pogačar, cruised to victory on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, the same day as the great Induction. How extremely lucky are we?
