Cooperstown dedication was a big deal in 1939

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Baseball wasn't "invented" in Cooperstown, N.Y., or anywhere else; the sport simply evolved from the English game of rounders. But of the thousands who invaded the picturesque hamlet near Lake Otsego on June 12, 1939, almost nobody seemed to care.

The occasion was the opening and dedication of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, which endures 68 years later as the mecca of our national game. Cooperstown remains a pastoral setting perfectly in keeping with the myth that a West Point cadet named Abner Doubleday dreamed up the sport in a cow pasture there one day in 1839. (The story was perpetuated and circulated by the Mills Commission, which was formed in 1905 to determine the origins of the game and took the easy way out.)

During baseball's supposed centennial year, however, no one bothered to expose the Cooperstown hoax for what it was. Probably everybody was having too much fun pretending it was true.

This was a simpler, more trusting time, and baseball stood alone at the top of America's sporting heap as war clouds gathered in Europe and Asia. Its chief rivals for attention were college football, boxing and thoroughbred racing. Pro football and basketball were further down the pecking order then, and hockey excited the populace in only a few U.S. cities. So the opening of baseball's Hall of Fame was a big deal indeed.

Its first members had been elected in 1936 before there was even a building to house their plaques. By 1939, 25 men had been so honored, and all 11 of the living members made their way to upstate New York for the dedication: Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, Connie Mack, Nap Lajoie, George Sisler, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Eddie Collins and Cy Young.

As far as fans were concerned, one immortal outshone all the others. Ruth, only four years removed from his final season, was mobbed by autograph seekers at every step.

"It was just like the old days -- my arm got terribly tired from signing," the 44-year-old Bambino said at day's end. "I didn't know there were so many people who didn't have my signature."

Because of travel problems, Cobb was late in arriving from California and checked into the Cooper Hotel about the time baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis announced his name during the ceremonies. When he finally arrived at the site, Cobb was largely ignored as the crowds swarmed around Ruth. It's safe to say the egotistical Georgia Peach was not pleased.

After the official dedication, many of the inductees donned vintage uniforms and served as a board of strategy for a seven-inning exhibition game between teams of current major leaguers. (If anybody cared, Wagner's squad defeated Collins' group 4-2.)

Nine future Hall of Famers played in the game: Arky Vaughan, Charlie Gehringer, Joe Medwick and Lefty Grove for the Wagners; Lloyd Waner, Billy Herman, Mel Ott, Hank Greenberg and Dizzy Dean for the Collinses. But again the erstwhile Sultan of Swat swiped the spotlight.