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.
