He was born in Manhattan and raised in Queens, but it was in the Bronx where Edward Charles Ford made his name — “Whitey,” just one of several colorful nicknames — as the most successful pitcher in Yankees history. Amid the team’s longest run of American League dominance, the street-wise, fair-haired southpaw set several franchise records during his 1950-67 run, and carved a spot among the league’s elite, making 10 All-Star teams, leading the American League in pitching triple crown categories five times, and winning a Cy Young award. A near-ubiquitous presence in October, he also set numerous World Series records that still stand and are probably unbreakable given the expansion of the postseason field; he pitched in 11 World Series, six on the winning side, and his count would have been even higher if not for a two-year military stint. In 1974, he was elected to the Hall of Fame alongside teammate and longtime friend Mickey Mantle.

Ford died on October 8 at his home in Long Island. He was 91 years old, and had been suffering the effect of Alzheimer’s disease in recent years. He was the second-oldest surviving Hall of Famer at the time of his death, with Tommy Lasorda the oldest. He’s the fifth Hall of Famer to pass away in 2020, after Al Kaline, Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, and Bob Gibson, and as I write this, news of the death of a sixth, Joe Morgan, has just been reported. It’s been a very tough year for baseball legends.

Standing just 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, Ford measures up physically as the shortest of the post-World War II pitchers elected to the Hall, but what he lacked in brawn, he made up for in brains. The prototypical crafty lefty, Ford “delivered his assortment of breaking stuff (including a devastating spitball, enemy batters claimed) and inside fastballs with commanding intelligence,” wrote Roger Angell in a 1989 New Yorker piece. “He was brusque and imperturbable on the mound — the Chairman of the Board — and light-hearted in the clubhouse. Say ‘Whitey Ford‘ to a fan over forty-five and east of Altoona, and the sun will come out.”

“He never throws a pitch without a purpose,” said pitching coach Johnny Sain in 1961, Ford’s Cy Young-winning season and his biggest one statistically. “He’s always bearing down, never careless.”

“Whitey, you never saw him in a bad mood,” said former teammate Roy White on the occasion of Ford’s 90th birthday. “He always had a smile on his face. Good at a joke, a funny guy.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Gibson, who died of pancreatic cancer on Friday, October 2 — the fourth Hall of Famer to die this year, after Al Kaline, Tom Seaver, and former teammate Lou Brock — was as tough and intense as they came. In 1967, about midway through his 17-year run with the Cardinals (1959-75), he was hit on the right shin by a Roberto Clemente liner. He pitched to three more batters before his already-cracked fibula snapped, sending him to the disabled list for over seven weeks. In the 13 months following his return, he was as dominant as any pitcher since the dead ball era, a run that included a 1.12 ERA during the 1968 regular season, still the lowest of any qualifier since 1914.

The indomitable Gibson possessed a mental toughness as well, one founded in a reserve of self-confidence that was the equal of his 95-mile-an-hour fastball and menacing glare. He dealt in intimidation, asserting his ownership of the inside corner of the plate and taking pride in his ability to “mess with a batter’s head without letting him into mine.” In his 1992 autobiography, Stranger to the Game, he described his repertoire: “I actually used about nine pitches — two different fastballs, two sliders, a curve, a change-up, knockdown, brushback, and hit-batsman.”

“He’d knock down his own grandmother if she dared to challenge him,” Hank Aaron once counseled teammate Dusty Baker. In one oft-told story, Gibson plunked former roommate Bill White after he was traded from the Cardinals to the Phillies:

Bob Gibson on hitting his friend Bill White. pic.twitter.com/6jxLF2MB5e

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) October 3, 2020

“I wanted to own the outside part of the plate. And the only reason you throw in here is to keep a guy from going out there,” said Gibson. Read the rest of this entry »

If Major League Baseball awarded MVP honors for the Wild Card Series, then Max Fried, Ian Anderson and the rest of a Braves pitching staff that held the Reds scoreless for 22 consecutive innings would have rightly claimed it, but Freddie Freeman played a significant role in the Braves’ advancement as well. In the bottom of the 13th inning of Game 1, more than four and a half hours into a scoreless standoff that set a postseason record, the 31-year-old first baseman’s single up the middle brought home Cristian Pache, his latest big hit in a season that for all of its brevity has been full of them.

Since the ballots have been cast, that hit won’t affect the voting, of course, but Freeman’s regular season performance has given him a shot at becoming the first first baseman to win an MVP award since Joey Votto in 2010. His performance was all the more amazing given that he tested positive for COVID-19 in early July, and feared for his own life as he battled high fevers. Thankfully, he not only recovered and regained his strength but did so in time to be in the Braves’ lineup on Opening Day. Remarkably, he played in all 60 games, one of 14 players to do so (not counting Starling Marte, who squeezed in 61 while being traded from the Diamondbacks to the Marlins). Freeman hit a sizzling .341/.462/.640, placing second in the National League in all three slash stats and wRC+ (187) behind Juan Soto, who played 13 fewer games due to his own COVID-19 battle.

Big hits? Freeman batted .423/.583/.885 in 72 plate appearances with runners in scoring position, good for a major league-best 264 wRC+ in that capacity. While he finished second in the NL behind teammate Marcell Ozuna in RBI (56 to 53), he led the majors in Win Probability Added (3.17), more than a full win ahead of the 10th-ranked Ozuna. Read the rest of this entry »

Getting old is for the birds. Since turning 37 on February 20, as the 2020 season has gone through its starts and stops, Justin Verlander has dealt with triceps soreness, a groin strain that required surgery and, after throwing six strong innings in his Opening Day start on July 24, a forearm strain. On Saturday, he announced that he would need Tommy John surgery, not only ruling out what the Astros hoped would be a comeback for this postseason, but almost certainly sidelining him for all of 2021, sending him into free agency with just one outing over a two-year span, and preventing him from attaining upper-tier spots in the all-time rankings of some significant categories.

Verlander broke the news himself via Instagram, saying in a video that he felt something in his elbow during Wednesday’s simulated game, which led to an MRI. Here’s the written statement from that post:

After consulting with several of the best doctors, it has become clear that I need Tommy John surgery. I was hopeful that I would be able to return to competition in 2020, however, during my simulated game unfortunately the injury worsened. Obviously I’m extremely disappointed, but I will not let this slow down my aspirations for my career. I will approach this rehab the only way I know, attack and don’t look back. I’m confident that with a proper rehabilitation program and my unwavering commitment that this surgery will ultimately lengthen my career as opposed to shorten it. I can’t thank my teammates, coaches, the front office and my fans enough for the support they have given me so far in this process. I’m eager to get through this recovery and back on the field to continue to do what I love.

This isn’t entirely a shock, but it is a bummer. In the wake of his forearm strain, some outlets had reported that Verlander would be out for the season, though the pitcher and the team didn’t rule out a comeback. He resumed throwing of flat ground in mid-August, off a mound in the first week of September, and had gone as high as 55-60 pitches in bullpen sessions before Wednesday, when he threw a total of 75 pitches, though only 24 game during his simulated game. The Astros hoped that he could make one more simulated start on Monday and then one competitive start before the postseason, but Verlander’s ulnar collateral ligament wasn’t buying it. Read the rest of this entry »

Lou Brock was a catalyst, not only for the Cardinals — whom he invigorated upon being traded from the Cubs in 1964, in one of the most infamously lopsided deals in major league history — but for all of baseball. Along with the Dodgers’ Maury Wills and the White Sox’s Luis Aparicio, Brock helped restore the stolen base to prominence as an offensive weapon, one that was particularly valuable during a low-scoring era. A cerebral, intensely competitive, and electrifying speedster who was ahead of his time in using film to study pitchers, Brock sparked the Cardinals, who hadn’t won a pennant in 18 years, to three in a five-year span and carved himself a niche in October while helping the team win two World Series. In his 19-year career (1961-79), he went on to set the single-season and career records for stolen bases, surpass the 3,000 hit milestone, have his uniform number (20) retired by the Cardinals, and earn first-ballot entry into the Hall of Fame.

Brock died on Sunday, September 6, having battled multiple health issues for several years. He had his lower left leg amputated in 2015 due to complications related to Type 2 diabetes, underwent treatment for multiple myeloma in ’17, and suffered a stroke the following year.

A six-time All-Star, Brock finished his career with a .293/.343/.410 (109 OPS+) line and 3,023 hits, a total that ranks 28th all-time; he also hit 149 homers. He hit .391/.424/.655 with four homers and a record 14 steals in 92 plate appearances spread over three World Series. He led the NL in stolen bases eight times, finished second an additional three times, and ran up impressive records. His 118 steals in 1974, when he was 35 years old, broke Wills’ modern record of 104, set in ’62. He surpassed Ty Cobb‘s modern record of 892 steals in 1977 and then 19th century star Slidin’ Billy Hamilton’s total (believed to be 937 at the time) two years later, finishing with 938. Rickey Henderson eventually surpassed Brock’s single-season and career marks, swiping 130 bases in 1982 and blazing past Brock on May 1, 1991, en route to a whopping total of 1,406 steals.

“The numbers can hardly tell the full story of Louis Clark Brock,” wrote New York Daily News reporter Phil Pepe on August 9, 1979, as Brock closed in on 3,000 hits. “They cannot tell you of the enthusiasm he possessed, the zest for the game, the excitement he generated, the joy of watching him. If you have not seen him play, you have missed one of the great joys of sport.”

“Watching Lou Brock taking a lead off first base is the best fun in baseball,” wrote Roger Angell in The New Yorker in 1974. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this year, the Hall of Fame postponed its annual Induction Weekend festivities, a perfectly understandable and defensible decision in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and the dangers of bringing together tens of thousands of fans from all around the country. On Monday, the institution dropped a more puzzling bit of news: it has postponed the upcoming Golden Days and Early Baseball Era Committee meetings that would have taken place in December. Both panels will now vote on their slates of candidates in 2021 for inclusion in the Hall’s Class of 2022.

Under normal circumstances, the two 16-member committees would have convened in person at this year’s Winter Meetings in Dallas, with the Early Baseball committee considering candidates whose greatest contribution to baseball came before 1950, and the Golden Days committee considering those whose greatest contribution occurred during the 1950-69 window. The committees were created as a result of the 2016 reorganization of the Era Committee process, which covers managers, executive, umpires, and long-retired players. Prior to the reorganization, three Era Committees rotated on a triennial basis, but the updated version de-emphasized the more bygone — and therefore more picked-over, as far as deserving candidates are concerned — periods in favor of the more recent ones, namely the Modern Baseball (1970-87) and Today’s Game (1988 onward) Era Committees. It was a welcome change, for the most part.

This would have been the Early Days committee’s only meeting during the 10-year cycle the Hall laid out in 2016, and the first of two meetings for the Golden Days group, with the next one coming in 2026. While that’s no big deal on the former front, given that all of its plausible candidates — such as pioneer Doc Adams, shortstop Bill Dahlen, and the incomparable Buck O’Neil — are now deceased, some for over a century, every year matters when it comes to any effort to honor members of the latter group while they’re still alive. The actual slates of candidates for either committee had not yet been announced, but from among the top vote recipients in the 2015 Golden Era Committee balloting, which resulted in a shutout, Dick Allen (who fell one vote short, receiving 11 of 16 votes) is now 78 years old, Tony Oliva (also one vote short) is 82, Jim Kaat (two votes short) is 81, and Maury Wills (three votes short) is 87. Minnie Miñoso, who in falling four votes short was the other candidate who escaped the “three or fewer votes” designation, died less than three months after the balloting and was somewhere between the ages of 89 and 92, depending upon the source. Time is decidedly not on these men’s sides. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a lousy time to be the Red Sox these days, running an American League-worst 6-16 record while allowing over six runs per game. Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez are out for the year, Rafael Devers and J.D. Martinez aren’t generating anything close to their usual firepower while much of the lineup wheezes, and 3,000 miles away, Mookie Betts is off to an MVP-caliber start with his new team, the Dodgers.

On Monday, Betts continued his early-season rampage, homering for the fifth time in five games. This time it was a leadoff shot against the Mariners’ Justin Dunn:

That was the 21st leadoff home run of Betts’ career, a total that’s tied for seventh since 2014, his first year in the majors; George Springer leads with 36. It was Betts’ ninth homer of the season, which would have tied him for the National League lead with Fernando Tatis Jr. if the Padres prodigy hadn’t hit two against the Rangers (the second of which broke the Internet and the game’s insufferable unwritten rules). The 27-year-old right fielder is hitting .319/.374/.681 with 1.6 WAR, tied with Brandon Lowe for third in the majors behind Tatis and Mike Yastrzemski (both 1.8).

Last Thursday, while his former team was losing so badly to the Rays that they used both catcher Kevin Plawecki and infielder Jose Peraza on the mound, Betts homered three times against the Padres. It wasn’t just any three-homer game, either — and not just because his first homer, off Chris Paddack, came on a pitch off the plate and away (a rarity Ben Clemens broke down on Friday). It was the sixth three-homer game of Betts’ career, which tied the major league record:

There are some prodigious home run hitters on that list; four of the 17 players above hit at least 600 in their careers, while two more are in the 500s and three in the 400s. Betts, on the other hand, is still two homers shy of 150, and yet there he is at the top alongside Sosa (609 homers in 18 seasons) and Mize (359 homers in 15 seasons, a total suppressed by his losing three prime seasons to World War II). He’s been helped a bit by playing in a homer-heavy era, and by Fenway Park as well, in that he’s the only player with three three-homer games there, as many as Nomar Garciaparra and Ted Williams put together. Read the rest of this entry »

The Baseball Hall of Fame’s Induction Weekend, which was scheduled for July 24-27, did not go off as originally planned due to the coronavirus pandemic, but this past weekend, Cooperstown gained a center fielder nonetheless. With his 2020 season debut, which he made on Friday, Mike Trout has now satisfied Hall of Fame election eligibility rule 3(B), which reads in part, “Player must have played in each of ten (10) Major League championship seasons.” Trout is thus fully qualified to be elected once his career ends and the requisite five-year waiting period has elapsed.

[UPDATE: Multiple commenters below questioned whether a season in which no champion is crowned — such as the strike-shortened 1994 season or, perhaps, this one if the pandemic proves unmanageable — constitutes a “championship season.” Regarding 1994, the presence of Jim Abbott, who pitched in the majors from 1989-96 and ’98-99 — 10 seasons, including ’94 — on the 2005 BBWAA ballot offers a precedent for the strike season counting as a championship season. Hall Vice President of Communications and Education Jon Shestakofsky additionally told FanGraphs, “While things could change given the nature of our present situation, we are currently looking at 2020 as a Major League championship season, as dictated by Major League Baseball.]

For most players, the possibility of election isn’t one that emerges until late in their careers, when major round-numbered milestones are being reached and tributes paid. Trout is not most players, for he has done so much at such a young age — he’ll turn 29 on August 7 — that his election is becoming a foregone conclusion. While his Angels have never won a postseason game (they were swept in the 2014 American League Division Series), and while he’s only led the league in one triple crown stat (RBI in 2014), he’s already made eight All-Star teams, won three MVP awards (not to mention the Rookie of the Year), and hit 286 home runs, including this one on Sunday off Oakland’s Mike Fiers — the first of his career on a 3-0 count:

It's good to see @MikeTrout home runs again. pic.twitter.com/f8ihDkuhZm

— MLB (@MLB) July 26, 2020

Trout scores 136 on the Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor, which is based on common statistical benchmarks and accomplishments for old-school stats that have historically tended to appeal to voters; there 100 is “a likely Hall of Famer and 130 “a virtual cinch.” But it’s not those old-school numbers that have made his actual election inevitable, it’s the newer-school ones, the likes of which weren’t added to the backs of baseball cards until after Moneyball was published. Trout, a career .305/.419/.581 hitter, has never won a batting title, and while he’s finished as high as second among the top 10 in the AL six times, that pales in importance to his dominance in other slash stat categories. He’s topped a .400 on-base percentage six times, missing by a point in another year, and leading the league four times. He’s topped a .600 slugging percentage three times, and never finished below .500 save for his cup-of-coffee 2011 season; he’s led that category three times. He’s led in wRC+ six times, including the last five in a row, all at 170 or above; when he hasn’t led, he’s finished second or third, the slacker. Since he entered the league, only Joey Votto has a higher on-base percentage (.438), but Trout has a 14-point edge in slugging percentage on second-ranked David Ortiz (.567) — and that’s in over 1,800 more plate appearances in a more pitcher-friendly environment. Trout’s 172 wC+ is 21 points higher than the second-ranked Votto.

His greatness isn’t just confined to offense, and we have the good fortune that Trouts career is unfolding at a time when we have the tools to appreciate the wholeness of his game. He not only has 200 career stolen bases, he owns an 84.7% success rate to go with it, the third-highest mark among players with at least 200 attempts. By FanGraphs’ reckoning, his 59.3 baserunning runs is second in the majors since his arrival. His totals of 11.1 UZR and 14 DRS over that span are less remarkable, but obviously both above average, and there’s significant value in his ability to play center field at such a level for so long; his overall defensive value — in this case UZR (including his time in left field) plus positional adjustment — puts him in the 89th percentile among all outfielders since 2011.

Add it all up — including his 452 batting runs, 118 more than the number two player over that span, Votto — and you have a player worth 73.4 WAR from 2011-19. That’s a full 50% more than the second-ranked player, Buster Posey, even though Trout’s 2011 season consisted of just 40 games. He has lapped the field.

Trout’s progress towards Cooperstown is most easily seen via JAWS. Just over two years ago, in late May 2018, when he was two-and-a-half months shy of his 27th birthday and still just in his sixth full season, he reached the JAWS standard for center fielders, the average of each Hall of Fame center fielder’s career WAR and his seven-year peak WAR. He blew past that mark like it was a rest stop on the moon for a guy bound for the outer solar system. He’s now 11.2 points above the standard, and fifth in JAWS among all center fielders:

Via Baseball-Reference’s version of WAR, Trout has already outproduced all but six center fielders, and he’s still more than a year away from his 30th birthday. His seven-year peak is surpassed only by Mays and Cobb, that despite the fact that three of his seven best seasons are 140 games or fewer — namely his top-ranked 2012 (139 games thanks to his belated call-up, but 10.5 WAR), third-ranked ’18 (140 games, 10.2 WAR), and seventh-ranked ’19 (134 games, 8.2 WAR). Compare what Trout has done though his age-27 season with the rest of the field:

Within that group are significant disparities in playing time; Ruth was 23 when he began dabbling in the outfield, while Mays missed most of his age-21 and all of his age-22 seasons due to military service during the Korean War, and the majority of the players on the list played 154-game seasons. Prorate everybody to WAR per 650 plate appearances, and Trout quite reasonably trails the ahead-of-his-time Ruth, but he still has the draw on everybody else. This is worth remembering, in part because he’s getting the shaft with regards to the impact of the pandemic-shortened season on his counting stats; the WAR-through-age-28 leader is Cobb (78.4), who’s out of Trout’s reach unless he literally matches the best 60-game stretch of his career, a 10-week jag in 2012 during which he hit .368/.431/.644 (197 wRC+) with 15 homers and 28 steals and was worth 5.6 WAR (fWAR, not bWAR, but the point stands). He’s projected for 3.3 WAR this year, which prorates to 8.9 over a full season. If he matches that projection, he’d inch past Hornsby on the list above.

WAR is just a number, though, in this case a quantitative estimate of Trout’s broad, remarkable collection of skills. Stacast’s numbers, by the way, further underscore those skills and the gifts that make them possible. Trout doesn’t hit the ball as hard as Aaron Judge; last year’s 0.8 mph average exit velocity placed him in the 79th percentile, but thanks to his 99th percentile launch angle, his contact produces maximum damage. He’s been in the 99th percentile in xwOBA annually. Oh, and he’s got 95th percentile sprint speed (just don’t ask about his outfield jumps).

We can look at Trout’s numbers all day, but for as fascinating as they are, they underscore that he’s still somewhere within a peak that nobody else is approaching. It’s a fine time to watch him play, particularly given that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that we’d get to see him this year. Not only was it quite possible that there would be no baseball in general due to the pandemic, but Trout, whose wife Jessica is due to give birth to the couple’s first child in August, has been understandably vocal in his ambivalence about playing in the midst of all this:

#Angels CF Mike Trout, whose wife is pregnant: "Honestly, I still don't feel that comfortable. It's gonna be tough. I've got to be really cautious these next couple weeks. I don't want to test positive. I don't want to bring it back to my wife. It's a tough situation we're in."

— Mike DiGiovanna (@MikeDiGiovanna) July 3, 2020

Mike Trout’s wife, Jessica, is due with their first child in August.

“We’re risking our families, risking our lives to go out here and play for everyone…I want to play. It’s just a tough situation. I’ve just got to play it by ear."

— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) July 3, 2020

pic.twitter.com/NFajfITTpu

— Debbie Trout (@DebbieTrout27) July 5, 2020

It wasn’t until last Wednesday that Trout definitively said, “I’m playing,” while noting how well his teammates had been adhering to the mask and social distancing protocols. He expressed relief over the fact that to that point, the team had experienced no outbreaks, and hopefully, things stay that way. Seeing what happened this weekend, with 12 Marlins players and two coaches testing positive, should drive home the possibility that this could happen to any team. If it were the Angels, it might be enough to send the game’s best player home for the remainder of the year, having decided the risks are too high.

For now, though, Mike Trout is playing baseball, cementing his legacy as a bona fide Hall of Famer, and finding new ways to impress us, like by putting a 3-0 pitch into play for just the seventh time in his career, and collecting his second such hit — his first since 2015 — and his first homer.

Last week, I was invited to participate in an ESPN roundtable pegged to the start of the season, answering questions about breakout players and defensive wizards and teams with the most to prove. One question to which I submitted an answer apparently didn’t get run; it asked, “Which player are you most excited to watch in a short season?” My answer was Trout, the same answer I’d give over a 10-game or 162-game season. He’s the best player on the planet, and it’s bad we’ve being robbed of the better part of what should be one of his prime seasons. Still, we are watching a bona fide Hall of Famer in the making as he lays tracks towards Cooperstown, and it would be foolish not to savor every opportunity we get to see that happen.

While this year’s Induction Weekend festivities have been postponed until next summer, on Wednesday the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum announced plans to reopen to the public on Friday, June 26, after nearly 3 1/2 months of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The reopening is being done with a comprehensive health and safety plan in place, one that includes mandatory mask wearing, timed entrances to limit capacity and allow for physical distancing, widespread availability of hand sanitizer, increased cleaning and disinfection schedules, and the continued closure of the building’s larger gathering spaces. All of this is being done in accordance with New York State’s regionally-focused phased reopening plan, as the Mohawk Valley (which includes Cooperstown) moves to Phase Four.

While New York has been hit the hardest of any state by the novel coronavirus, with over 390,000 conformed cases and over 30,000 deaths according to data from the Centers for Disease Control, the impact in Otsego County, which has a population of 62,000 with Cooperstown as its county seat, has been comparatively minimal, with just 74 confirmed cases and five deaths as of June 22, including only 12 confirmed cases and one death in the six weeks since I covered the virus’ impact on the region in early May.

Despite the minimal number of cases locally, the cancellation of Induction Weekend — which, with Derek Jeter as the marquee attraction was expected to exceed last year’s estimated 55,000 attendees and perhaps even eclipse the all-time record of 82,000 from 2007, when Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn were honored — has hit the area hard, particularly as it followed the cancellation of the Cooperstown Dreams Park series of youth baseball tournaments, which annually bring over 17,000 youth players (and their families) to the region. As of early May, the estimate for the economic impact on local governments via lost sales taxes on the area’s restaurants, hotels, rental properties, and baseball-oriented shops stood at $50 to $150 million. Read the rest of this entry »

“I would tell you very quickly it was scaled down to, ‘It’s either July 26 or it’s 2021,” said Tim Mead, president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in discussing the institution’s decision to postpone this year’s Induction Weekend due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. “There’s a standard and the quality associated with that ceremony and the Induction Weekend, and we weren’t going to trim any of it for any reason just to make sure it happens.”

I spoke to Mead on Sunday, May 3, four days after the Hall officially announced that there would be no induction ceremony this year and 370 days after he was announced as the seventh president in the institution’s history. In the days before and since, I also spoke to Cooperstown’s past and present mayors as well as a couple of local small business owners for whom the cancellation is just the latest of several blows suffered amid a shutdown that threatens to wipe out the entire tourist season.

The Hall itself has been closed since March 15, and the streets of the town of around 1,800 are deserted, that despite relatively few residents in the town and its surrounding areas falling ill from the virus. The underlying rural/urban tensions caused by the shutdown are playing out all over the country right now, but there may be no place where the contrast is as stark as this idyllic and storied village, which annually draws half a million visitors from all across the U.S., and even internationally, for its baseball-related attractions.

What Mead conveyed in our conversation is the Hall’s sense of responsibility in announcing its decision just shy of three months ahead of the actual weekend. The handwriting on the wall is clear enough, particularly given the complex logistics that underly the celebration. At a time when public health officials are mandating social distancing measures and strongly advising against gatherings of even a handful of people, the thought of tens of thousands of people traveling long distances, convening, and then returning to their communities — potentially furthering the spread of the coronavirus or fueling the second wave of an outbreak — is a nonstarter. Read the rest of this entry »