The Hall of Fame Case for Charles Ebbets

For reasons passing understanding, Charles Ebbets is not a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. This is shameful at best and unforgivable at worst.  Imagine a baseball lineage without Ebbets Field, which débuted in 1913, becoming the home for a team with various...

The Hall of Fame Case for Doc Adams

Victory, it is said, has a thousand fathers.  Baseball, too. Daniel Lucius “Doc” Adams is, for reasons passing understanding, without tangible recognition in Cooperstown, despite being a highly significant contributor to baseball’s genesis.  It is...

Cooperstown’s Hall of Fa(r)mers

Given America’s roots as an agrarian nation, it is appropriate that the legend of baseball’s birth begins in a Cooperstown cow pasture; Doubleday Field, just a baseball throw from the Hall of Fame, occupies the spot where the myth—long since debunked—of...

The Hall of Fame Case for Gene Autry

Gene Autry wore many hats, proverbially speaking, besides the cowboy dome piece in his movies: Owner of Los Angeles television station KTLA from 1963 to 1982 Original singer of the Christmas standard Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Army Air Corps officer and Air...

How Cooperstown Got Its Name

Cooperstown is a destination rooted in myth.  Abner Doubleday did not, most certainly, invent baseball on a grassy area while he was a military school cadet. And yet, it is that myth anchoring the village’s notoriety as the home of the National Baseball Hall of...