Cooperstown’s Sacrifice Amid the Coronavirus
“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 »