Published: June 12, 2008 08:58 am      

Many reasons to save game

Back in late February, I wrote a response to the Crier’s Feb. 28 editorial “Save the Weekend“, in which I said that “the paper’s criticism of savethefamegame.com and the growing number of people nationwide who have voiced their own opinions is misguided.” The response was passionate because I am passionate about baseball, but even more so about Cooperstown. Cooperstown is a place that has always respected the past and has always respected traditions, and I like to think that the Hall of Fame Game is a Cooperstown and baseball tradition worth trying to preserve for my generation, and for those generations that will follow.

Since 1940, generations of Americans have built their own personal and family traditions around making the pilgrimage to Cooperstown to see two Major League teams play in the sport’s celebrated hometown. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and friends and neighbors alike have been able to experience firsthand the glory of the national pastime in a setting that is intimate, pure, and inspiring, and more true to baseball’s history than any other setting you can find today.

Equally compelling to me in my decision to try to make a difference is that Cooperstown is my hometown. It is where I was allowed to experience, learn, mature, and to develop into the person that I am today, and it continues to move me every time I return. I haven’t been a full-time resident of Cooperstown for over a decade, but there is not a day that goes by when I don’t feel that I am a part of the Cooperstown community.

So I launched savethefamegame.com, a grassroots campaign that has given people from all over the world the chance to stand up to this decision, too, and people have responded. People are choosing to fight because they don’t like how the Commissioner’s Office and the Players Association are treating baseball only as an industry, always choosing to chase the extra dollar without regard to serving the sport’s best interests as a national game and as an integral part of our American identity and history. Most importantly, people don’t like how MLB and the union are treating baseball fans.

People are responding because they don’t want to be the people who sat by and allowed Cooperstown to lose out to someone else’s bottom line, and as a result have an integral part of its own identity and history taken away from it without a fight.

Some people — even if they are not from Cooperstown or the surrounding area — are responding because they are concerned about a small-town, tourism-based economy of 2,000 fulltime residents losing a day during the summer when there are 10,000 people on and around Main Street.

Some people are responding because they’re concerned about Cooperstown Central School students losing an opportunity to fundraise for their senior trip or other class activities, taking the burden off the local community to fund activities that have a lasting impact and benefit for those who are able to experience them. They are responding because they are worried about a family of four losing an up-close-and-personal opportunity to see Major League teams and players.

Whatever each individual’s personal reason for voicing their opinion may be, the group all shares the same passion, and that is to save the Hall of Fame Game and preserve a great Cooperstown, American and baseball tradition.

Kristian Connolly grew up in Cooperstown and now resides in Washington, D.C. He is the creator of the web site savethefamegame.com, which is dedicated to reversing the decision to end the annual Hall of Fame Game after the 2008 contest.