NO NEED FOR AN UMPIRE’S CALL: Cooperstown, New York, runs on baseball. And as the Baseball Hall of Fame celebrates its 75th anniversary on June 12, baseball lovers can cheer more than one milestone. July also brings a new batch of inductees (including star players Frank Thomas, Greg Maddux, and Tom Glavine) following last year’s steroids-disqualified dry spell.
But some things never change: The induction ceremony draws an endless stream of baseball fanatics from across the country, who hold their caps and grow misty-eyed when approaching their heroes. Living legends recount locker room pranks from their signing tables at baseball card shops and stroll together through manicured gardens to the 105-year-old
Otesaga Resort Hotel. “Cooperstown is like visiting the old days,” says Yogi Berra, the patriarchal former Yankees catcher. All summer long, youth teams arrive in caravans soap-painted “Cooperstown or Bust” to test their mettle at Dreams Park. Yet many visitors leave without realizing that this village hits all the bases in the arts, too-from the Fenimore Art Museum to Glimmerglass, a lakeside opera festival named for what native writer James Fenimore Cooper called Otsego Lake. Music-loving Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg usually attends and sometimes gives lectures, -sascha zuger
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