The Baseball Hall of Fame

On a cold morning in the winter of 1933, Stephen Clark, who owned and operated the Singer Sewing Machine Company, looked out the window from his office on Main Street in Cooperstown, New York. He did not like what he saw. The small town had been devastated by a lethal combination of forces beyond his control. The Great Depression had almost bankrupted his company, which was the town's largest employer, and the nation's prohibition against liquor had crushed the local hops industry during the prior decade.

The tiny village was on the verge of collapse and Clark, one of its leading pillars, knew that he had to help save it. After many weeks of thought and worry, Clark came up with an idea.

Baseball and It's Alleged Cooperstown Roots

According to a legend that still prevailed in the 1930s, a young West Point cadet named Abner Doubleday had created the game of baseball in Cooperstown during the summer of 1839. Although that little bit of history later proved to be untrue, Clark probably couldn't have cared one way or the other. The circumstances required that he embrace and propagate the Doubleday myth in order to save his town. That is precisely what he did.

In the hopes of attracting tourists to Cooperstown, Clark decided that he would create and operate a new baseball museum, which would be called the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Seeking official support for his idea, Clark lobbied for and obtained the approval of his new Hall of Fame from the Presidents of the National and American Leagues and from Kenesaw M. Landis, who had been baseball's commissioner since the 1919 Black Sox scandal. All three baseball men supported Clark's idea, and began sending baseball memorablilia and artifacts to his offices in Cooperstown. By late 1935, Clark and the baseball elite had also enlisted the official support of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA), and by 1936, it was agreed that members of the BBWAA would elect several of the game's great players for membership in the Hall.

The First Inductees

That summer, the BBWAA elected five players for enshrinement: Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson.

From 1937 through 1939, the BBWAA elected another 21 retired players and managers for membership. The elected figures legends named Cy Young, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Tris Speaker, Wee Willie Keeler and Cap Anson. During the first five years of the Hall's existence, the vast collection of baseball antiques and mementos outgrew the small offices in Village Hall, and Clark commissioned the construction of a new building at 25 Main Street.

Construction was completed in early 1939 and that summer, the new National Baseball Hall of Fame was dedicated in a public ceremony that was attended by Landis and all of the members of the 1936 class except for Mathewson, who had died in 1925.

The Hall's New Home is a Big Hit

The larger museum was an instant success, attracting some 5,000 tourists to the town in 1940. That was just the beginning, however. Over the next sixty-five years, membership in the Hall of Fame would grow from five players to 280, and visitors to the museum expanded from a few thousand to almost half a million tourists per year.

Today the museum holds some 35,000 baseball artifacts, including include bats, gloves, uniforms, rare photos and much, much more. There are also more than 2.5 million items stored and displayed in the museum's library. As of the year 2000, it was reported that the Hall of Fame is responsible for more than half of the town's jobs and annual income.

In other words, Stephen Clark's dream of saving and advancing his town through baseball has indeed become a reality.

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