Justice: Cooperstown, as quaint and peaceful as ever
From Richard Justice at MLB.com on June 10, 2014, with mention of SABR member Sasha Gagarin:
Welcome to the land that time forgot, a place perfectly preserved from another America. This is Norman Rockwell’s canvas, one that is incomprehensibly beautiful. This is different, though. This isn’t a movie set.
“We try to stay with the times without being of the times,” said Andrew Oberriter, owner of Cooperstown Wine and Spirits. “Does that make sense?”
Oberriter has lived here almost all of his 39 years, and like virtually all of the town’s other 2,000 year-round residents, he prides himself on Cooperstown being the same as it ever was.
No matter how many times visitors have been here, they’re almost always struck again by the timelessness. Cooperstown is a village of tree-lined streets and hundred-year-old colonials. It’s parks and hiking trails and mountains and the beauty of Lake Otsego.
Main Street is where people shop and stroll and chat. It’s the pizza parlor down there, the ice cream place over here. There’s a bakery, Schneider’s, an absolute treasure. At the hardware store, people browse the aisles and visit with one another and take their sweet old time.
There are pubs and restaurants and bookstores and an assortment of gift shops. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and museum sits at the end of Main Street and is the focal point of the city’s tourism industry. The Hall of Fame will attract 300,000 tourists a year, but the complete Cooperstown experience is about coming and soaking in all of it, the restaurants and the inns. It’s taking a couple of days to breathe deep.
Read the full article here: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20140609&content_id=78956028&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb
Originally published: June 10, 2014. Last Updated: June 10, 2014.