Reporter’s Notebook by Paula DiPerna
The Pure Joy of Hall of Fame Weekend 2025
When the early apples fall from my tree, they sound like a baseball hitting a catcher’s mitt, a pounding, cracking thump. Strike 1, 2, 3—baseball and apple trees? Can baseball ever be far from mind here in Cooperstown, or from my childhood memories of following every footfall of the New York Yankees, sweeping one World Series after the other, it seemed.
Some years it’s not this way—some years I just listen to the apples fall and let Induction Weekend come and go. But not this year. 2025 drew me—somehow its themes of inclusion and international reach to include the first Japanese player ever inducted, the incomparable Ichiro, as the public calls him, seemed like a gentle summons. Like the baseball barker selling Cracker Jack popcorn in the baseball stands—“C’mon get it, see what it’s all about!”
And so I did. I started on Main Street on Saturday morning, where both sides of Main Street looked like a festival of beach chairs, all kinds and colors already in place for that evening’s parade, still hours away. I spotted a woman alone, comfortably seated, wearing a Yankee shirt—my kind of fan.
I asked her, “Are you going to sit here until the parade tonight?”
Oh, yes,” said she. “I want to have this exact spot.”
Intrigued and always curious about the provenance of people, I asked, “Where are you from?”
A pallor of slight fear came over her face and at first she didn’t answer. Then it clicked. I had detected a slight Latina accent—perhaps she was skittish about saying where she was from, worrying I might somehow be affiliated with ICE and its agents now having a quota for deportations? Quickly, I added, “I’m a Yankee fan from way back, too, and it’s wonderful to have you here.”
Then she smiled and added a straightforward, “I’m from New York.”
I moved on to get my mail.
On the way back to my car, I spotted two gentlemen with a card table on the corner by the library. One quipped to the other, “Well, if she has her car’s top down, that means it won’t rain,” to which I returned the quip, “Don’t worry—it cannot rain on Induction Weekend.” Who were they? A father selling beautiful and unique baseball cards based on paintings by his son, “an artist since he was little,” said the proud dad, echoed by the artist’s grandfather, part of the sales team. The wares? An irresistible packet of cards celebrating Japanese baseball stars Ishiro Suzuki, of course, about to be inducted, and Shohei Otani, a new superstar who hits so many home runs he now flips his bat as he takes off down first base.
Sunday morning arrived. Clouds hovering. I was invited by friends to sit with them at the induction—the family of four had flown from Seattle to be here to honor the induction of Ishiro, the long-standing supreme ballplayer for the Seattle Mariners. About a decade ago, a Seattle friend had taken me to a game at Mariner stadium and we had seats along the first-base line. The crowd’s devotion to Ishiro infused the stadium like a perfume of adoration. They loved him then and they love him now.
We settled in to our places and I was again amazed at how, year after year, the Hall of Fame executes Induction Weekend perfectly—safety, cleanliness, comfort, excellent audio visuals, grace, and courtesy to locals and visitors alike. Induction Weekend is a model for efficiency in organizing events. Even the lines for a hot dog prepped by the Cooperstown High School were never too long. Enough staff, enough of just about everything we needed to enjoy the day.
And so I was entirely swept up in the spectacle ahead. What a roster of stars, and how notable and graceful their remarks.
Billy Wagner was first to hear the words on his brand-new HoF plaque. Taking to the stage just after that, he seemed to leave not a single person he had ever met out of his roster of thanks. Yes, at times long lists of thank you’s can become tedious, but somehow not this year. Gratitude was everyone’s theme—for the game of baseball, for the ability to play it with excellence, for all the coaches and friends and guidance over the years, for society’s evolution to at last include those fabulous and devoted players who had been formerly excluded from the mainstream for no reason other than skin color.
I hung to every word of Dave Parker II, honoring his late father, Dave Parker, who was being inducted just a month after his death, who had left a poem and asked his son to read it on Induction Day. Here was Dave Parker himself, speaking to us about all he had loved and all he had overcome—pop, beat, more sounds of baseball’s rhythms. And the wife of Dick Allen, Willa Allen, eulogizing her husband, who was also being inducted and also passed away, citing a young man Dick Allen had helped along the way who said simply, “Dick changed my life with kindness.” And CC Sabathia, as clear as a bell, kicking off his remarks by thanking all the women in his life for their support and inspiration.
The young people in the audience were getting life’s lessons from each of these players in a few minutes—that not a single one of us can succeed alone, and that success comes mostly from the same basic ingredients well beyond skill itself—perseverance, humility, gratitude. Everyone in the audience had to have that takeaway—that everyone depends on someone else a bit day-to-day and we must work together.
I walked around and spotted two young men happily donning the Ishiro shirts they had just bought. One from Boston, one all the way from Japan itself. They exuded pure joy—“We just love Ishiro,” they beamed.
It’s not only that Ishiro was the first baseball player from Japan to be inducted, but the contributions of Japan to the game itself were a major drawing card this year. The special and artful Japanese baseball optic is on eloquent display this summer in the “don’t miss” homage exhibition at The Art Garage, “Samurai Baseball,” a show of work by 15 local artists devoted to what Japan has brought to the international pastime. And to what does the show refer—the samurai spirit of bushido—meaning “the way of the warrior,” but this way it feels more internal than swashbuckling. According to Robert Seward, an artist in the show and professor emeritus at Meiji Gakuin University in Japan, bushido includes loyalty, respect, mental fortitude, discipline. And, Seward has written, an overriding pillar, perhaps, is “wa, which translates as ‘group harmony’ and is a cornerstone of Japanese society.”
And when Suzuki spoke, he epitomized this harmony, delicately weaving his own narrative with that of all the years and people he honored and who had honored him—his own early baseball heroes, and his contemporary fans, family, team-mates. He seemed to extoll his every lived moment, speaking, it seemed, directly to the younger audience, explaining that he personally cleaned his own equipment in every single game, not only so that it would always be in perfect shape, but so that he would have no one else to blame for a failure of his own making.
“If you consistently do the little things,” said he to us all, “there is no limit to what you can do,” adding how, ultimately, the key ingredient is to pay attention to preparation and “take responsibility for yourself.”
The crowd cheered and gave him several standing ovations. In fact, for several hours, everyone cheered for everyone, no matter which inductee had been their favorite.
And just this week, fans in Atlanta rose to their feet to cheer the first woman umpire in the regular season of Major League Baseball. Jen Pawol took the field at a game between the Braves and the Marlins, humbly acknowledged her first, and then in a nod to the history/herstory she was making, donated the cap she wore that night to the HoF. Perhaps next we can envision a return to women playing major league baseball, too, as women from all over the nation did during World War II to keep the sport alive while men were drafted for war. The All American Girls Professional Baseball League was honored by the HoF and Gallery 53 on Main Street in 1988 and, of course, made legendary in the witty and warm movie “A League of Their Own,” partly filmed right here around Doubleday Field. Breakthroughs happen and, as it’s said, we make the path by walking.
My Yankee days seem long ago, but maybe not as far away as I think. My apple tree had a bumper crop this year.
Paula DiPerna is an author and global environmental policy advisor. Her most recent book is “Pricing the Priceless…” (Wiley).
