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Friday, February 8, 2008February 8 2008Schumer Leads Charge To Preserve HoF Game U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer provided the spark, and resistance to Major League Baseball’s decision to end the seven-decade-old Hall of Fame Game caught fire. "In this era of mega-million dollar payrolls and unaffordable luxury boxes, there is a unique value in playing a simple game of ball in a quaint setting like Doubleday Field," Schumer had written MLB Commissioner Bud Selig after the decision became public. "Simply put," the state’s senior senator continued, "Major League Baseball needs to be a living part of Cooperstown, not merely an enshrinement of its rich past." The latest manifestation came Wednesday, Feb. 6, when the Otsego County Board of Representatives authorized its chairman, Jim Powers, to write its own letter to Selig objecting to the decision. "The real reason – in addition to the economic impact – is the tradition. We hate to lose the tradition," said county Rep. Jim Johson, R-Otsego, who introduced the issue at the end of the board’s monthly meeting. Initially, local reaction was subdued, but numerous newspapers outside Otsego County quickly decried Selig’s decision. "It’s a hassle to get to Cooperstown. And there’s not enough money to be 1 made there," the Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, editorialized. "But it’s no hassle to send two MLB teams to play in China this year. There’s no talk of complexities or inherent challenges or suitable dates. "But there is a whiff of money to be made." Said the Auburn Citizen, "Cooperstown will take an economic hit, as the contest always sold out and brought thousands to the village." The varied responses prompted The Freeman’s Journal to create an Internet petition on www.ipetitions.com mid-afternoon Friday, Feb. 1, and by the end of the workday more than 100 people had already signed it electronically, asking Selig to change his mind. By Wednesday, Feb. 6, 253 people had signed, and 147 had left comments. "In today’s world of sporting events, where the average ‘Fan Cost Index’ has topped more than $200 to attend many major league games, the preservation of the Cooperstown Hall of Fame Game is more important to the fan base than ever," wrote Kenneth R. Deans Jr. "As Teyve said in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ Tradition. Traditions need to be observed, especially when it comes to one such as this," said Bruce P. Frassinelli of Oswego. "What is MLB thinking?" asked Dr. Sasha Matson of Cooperstown. "You would think they have been getting enough bad press recently! This misguided action is a disgrace, and an insult to history and to the game of Baseball itself. " "Now is the time to preserve the best, to shine over the present storm weathered by America’s National Pastime," commented Alex and Barbara Shields of Richfield Springs. Soon, Kristian Connolly, CCS ‘95, who has worked for the Minnesota Twins and MLB.com, launched www.savethefamegame.com, urging visitors to e-mail MLB President & COO Bob Dupuy and MLB Players Association head Don Fehr, as well as Petroskey, to save the game. Fan pressure can help change the decision, said Connolly, whose parents, Michael and Kathleen, still live within a couple of blocks of the Hall. "Commissioner Selig has always been very aware of and concerned with his own legacy as guardian of the game," said Connolly, and might very well view the Hall of Fame Game’s demise "as a true black mark on his legacy in the minds of fans and lovers of the sport. "I’m hopeful that the commissioner’s sense of what’s right as far as the best interest of baseball and its fans will ultimately be challenged and changed by the showing this campaign generates." To a merchant, baseball retailers in downtown Cooperstown agreed to keep copies of the petition by their cash registers and encourage shoppers to sign it. "It takes a great weekend away from us," said Artie Ausfeld of A&E Sports. "It’s good. It’s very good for us," Jeff Foster, Legends Are Forever owner, said of the game. The influx of cash in May after the lean months allowed merchants to pre-pay for summer inventory in cash, he said. "It’s just a terrific weekend for us," echoed Barry Renert, manager of Seventh Inning Stretch. "There’s no question about it." 70 Warned: Clear Your Icy Sidewalks – Or Else COOPERSTOWN After ice-storms over the weekend of Feb. 1-3 turned Cooperstown sidewalks into ice rinks, the village Public Works Department issued 70 warnings to homeowners and renters: Clear your walks! Village law requires people to do so within 24 hours of the end of a storm, and Public Works Superintendent Brian Clancy said, so far this winter – with perhaps a dozen storms behind us – he’d only issued 18 warnings total. Clancy warned people on Tuesday, Feb. 5. The next morning, he went back and checked, and only a half-dozen of the errant shovelers hadn’t responded. The village crews then cleared those sidewalks Wednesday, Feb. 6, and – as empowered by local ordinance – those who didn’t shovel will be charged based on manpower costs, a minimum of one hour, the superintendent said. He estimated the bills will come out to about $45. Medallion Hunt Confounds Many  COOPERSTOWN Call it Winter Festival Fever. Untold dozens of local folks have been scouring the Village of Cooperstown’s public lands for the past three weeks, looking for "The Medallion," to no avail. "There were even some high school seniors dressed as pirates looking for it the other day," said Donna Borgstrom, co-chairman of this year’s Winter Carnival, which begins Friday, Feb. 8 and runs through Sunday, Feb. 10. The carnival features dancing and revelry at various venues the first two evenings, snow-sculpting on Main Street Saturday afternoon, the coronation of a Pirate king and queen, a parade, a 5K and 10K run, and much, much more. Last year, the first clue was all the Hanson family needed to find the medallion at Three Mile Point Park. This year, so far nothing. In greater numbers, medallion hunters have been showing up at The Freeman’s Journal offices at 21 Railroad Ave. first thing Thursday afternoon to try to get a jump on the competition. The clue contained in this newspaper (see Page 12) is supposed to be specific enough to give the game away. "People have been really hunting," said Donna, who brought the idea from St. Paul, Minn., where a similar hunt is a highlight of that city’s Winter Carnival, the nation’s oldest and largest such event. "People have been really hunting for the medallion," said Borgstrom. "I understand people were digging at Fairy Spring Park – digging in the ground, (which they aren’t supposed to.)" In any event, the carnival is off to a good start. One worry. "Pray for snow," Donna said Wednesday afternoon. And that evening it appeared as if even that wish were coming true. Bloody Sock, Asterisk, Now – The Grapefruit? The day Sammy Sosa autographed Charlie Vascellaro’s grapefruit in Arizona last March, one of the first people Charlie called was Andrew Vilacky. “What do I do?” he asked Vilacky, who owns Safe At Home Ball Park Collectibles, 91 Main St., Cooperstown. “Eat it,” came the reply. Which brings us to today. Go down to Safe At Home and you’ll see the grapefruit in one of the locked cases Andrew reserves for only his most valuable artifacts. But we’re getting ahead of the story. Charlie, the freelance sportswriter from Baltimore by way of Arizona and Long Island – he lives in Cooperstown summers – is out in Mayville, Ariz., for the Milwaukee Brewers spring training. The Brewers are playing the Texas Rangers, and Charlie and a pal decide to take a seventh-inning stroll around the ballpark’s perimeter. Sammy Sosa was having a try-out with the Rangers, and in the right-field corner is a young Spanish speaking lad, 11, with a ball he’d been given by Sammy at age 6. He’s dying to get Sosa’s autograph on that ball, and Charlie coaches him in “aggressive politeness.” Sammy walks into the kid’s vicinity. The boy follows Charlie’s advice, and Sosa signs the ball. “The kid’s just glowing,” and Charlie’s feeling pretty good too. And, against all odds, he just happens to have a grapefruit with him he’d picked off a tree some days before and had been rolling around in the back of his car. “I stuck the grapefruit through the fence,” said Charlie. “When he saw the kid, he went right for him. Just like that, he came right for me.” Sosa “spent a lot of time rolling it around in his hands, trying to figure out what to do. Then he signed it real nice. He even put a little number 21 on top. He was still laughing about it five minutes afterwards.” That night, Charlie was having a beer at a bar in Tempe with a couple of sportswriters, when Mike Welton of the Mesa Tribune says, “a taxidermist. You’ve got to call a taxidermist.” The next morning, he Googles taxidermists, but is told, “No, no. It needs to be freeze-dried.” Charlie, who is also a travel writer, was being put up at the swank Hotel Valley Ho in Scottsdale, and when the very attentive concierge calls to find out how he’s doing, he raises the question. “She appreciated the challenge,” Charlie recalls. Within half an hour, she had connected him with Floral Keepsakes, an enterprise that advertises it “has specialized in floral preservation since 1988.” It was only $30, a bargain. But Floral Keepsakes has to batch a number of jobs in a casket-like freeze-drier, so Charlie had to leave it there when he came back east at the end of March. “They showed me ‘display case options,’” he said. “I picked out the case that you see.” All went well, and the grapefruit showed up in the mail in Baltimore in June. And so the story comes full circle. Charlie arrives in town Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 6, with the dried grapefruit and, frankly, it looks pretty good. Nice and yellow. Sosa’s Sharpie markings are clear and sharp. The plan? To sell the grapefruit. The price? $3,000. That’s some piece of fruit. GOP Representatives Unveil County Vision Not only no new taxes, no higher taxes – if possible. That was the pledge contained in the “vision” for the next two years of county government unveiled Wednesday, Feb. 6, by the bolstered Republican majority that reclaimed control of the county Board of Representatives as of Jan. 1. Detailed at a press conference, presided over by board Chairman Jim Powers, R-Butternuts, that preceded the board’s monthly meeting, some of the key points included: • A top-to-bottom review of how county business is conducted, perhaps leading to the creation of a budget officer or fiscal clerk with budget-building responsibilities. (The new majority has shied away from a full-fledged county manager.) • A preference for promoting from within, with the idea that department heads will train their successors. The idea is to smooth out shaky transitions being blamed for some of the budget mix-ups of the past year. • Adoption of a “zero tolerance” drug- and alcohol-abuse policy. Again, the lack of such has been blamed for one particularly embarrassing situation in the past year. Freshman county Rep. Jim Johnson, R-Otsego, set the stage, reading a statement that declared: “Otsego County residents have been feeling their wallets squeezed by high property taxes; they are feeling uncomfortable about a county government that seems to grow and spend uncontrollably; and they have been frustrated by the burdens of tax errors, employee mismanagement and increasing regulations.” On the uncontrollable spending issue, Powers emphasized the goal of the new majority will be “no tax-hike budgets.” However, county Rep. Greg Relic, R-Unadilla, at the chairman’s request, explained that is “a goal” that may depend in part on whether there is a national recession. A 5 percent dip in sales tax revenues, said Relic, who is chairing the Administration Committee, the county equivalent of Ways and Means, would translate into a 15 percent property tax hike. Powers called the document he released a “vision.” Johnson called it a “hit list.” Regardless, the chairman said it is a work in progress that the caucus will pursue vigorously. In addition to Powers, Relic and Johnson, the briefing included Betty Anne Schwerd, Edmeston; Scott Harrington, Oneonta; Kathy Clark, Otego, and Sam Dubben, Roseboom. Labels: Archives
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