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Friday, April 18, 2008April 18 2008Looking Inside, HoF Picks Idelson As Sixth President 14-Year Veteran Elevated, Avoiding Nationwide Search   By JIM KEVLIN COOPERSTOWN Surprises in the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum’s highest management ranks continued in recent days when, in forgoing plans for a national search, the Board of Directors named a 14-year HoF veteran as the 69-year-old institution’s sixth president. Jeff Idelson, 43, vice president for communications and education since 1999 and acting president since Dale Petroskey’s sudden resignation on Tuesday, March 25, was elevated to the presidency on Tuesday, April 15. The decision was announced the following day. In making the announcement, HoF Chairman Jane Forbes Clark said Idelson has served “with great success and passion” since arriving in 1994, and anticipates he will continue to do so in the top job “for many years to come.” Idelson said overseeing the extension of “70 years of success will be a great challenge that I’m very excited about continuing. The Hall of Fame is a national treasure.” At a press briefing Wednesday afternoon, he recalled having “goose bumps” at his first Hall of Fame Induction, when Phil Rizzuto was entered into the Hall. He’s expecting a similarly emotional reaction this summer when he will be on the rostrum for the first time when “Goose” Gossage is inducted. Idelson emphasized that overseeing the institution’s “continuing evolution” is central to his approach. Added Jane Clark, “status quo is something this museum has never been.” Since he’s been in senior management for 10 years, Idelson said, he knows the people and the issues, and should be able to get up to speed relatively quickly. Echoing Petroskey, he characterized himself as “a team player, a good listener and a part of the collective whole.” On specific issues, he appeared resigned to allowing the Hall of Fame Game to expire with the June 16 Doubleday Field matchup between the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres, but said he is working with state Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, to come up with an “event of magnitude” to replace it. On finances, Jane Clark and Idelson appeared to be retreating from the contention that profitability had been part of the reason for Petroskey’s departure. In an earlier interview, Miss Clark said the institution ran in the red in 2006, but now she said, “2006 may not have been our best year, but we were very strong in all the other years.” Idelson pointed out that the 2007 membership increase from 20,000 to 31,000 shows the HoF’s underlying strength, and he said few museums can depend on the financial shot in the arm the Hall receives on Induction Weekend and, in the past few years anyhow, the Hall of Fame Game. And he spoke of the Hall’s “gold-plated reputation that many corporations and individuals want to be connected with.” (A few days before, AT&T announced it would be providing $150,000 for a second year to help underwrite the Hall’s educational programs. See Page 2.) As president, Idelson assumes a position first held by Stephen C. Clark Sr., the Hall of Fame’s founder and Jane Clark’s grandfather. A West Newton, Mass., native, Idelson graduated from Connecticut College in 1986 with a degree in international economics, then spent three years in the Boston Red Sox’ public relations department. His duties included producing home games for the 110-station Red Sox Radio Network. He joined the New York Yankees in 1989, serving as director of public relations and publicity during George Steinbrenner’s hiatus from the game. Before joining the Hall, he was assistant vice president and senior press officer for World Cup USA 1994. Among his honors, he received the MLB’s Robert O. Fishel Award for Public Relations Excellence in 1994, and the 2006 Leadership and Service Award from Ithaca College’s Department of Sports Management and Media. At the press briefing, Idelson – he and wife Erika have two children in Cooperstown schools, Aaron, 12, and Nicole, 8 – said in recent years there’s been “a concentrated effort” to give the Hall “a stronger place in the community,” and he intends to continue that pursuit. Mayor Vows To Smooth Village’s ‘Rough Edges’ By JIM KEVLIN COOPERSTOWN ‘America’s Most Perfect Village is becoming rough around the edges,” Mayor Carol B. Waller said in delivering her 2008 State of the Village Speech to the Cooperstown Rotary Club Tuesday, April 15. With the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Bassett Healthcare and the other attractions, a million people a year visit this community of 1,900 souls. “All those footprints and tire tracks take a toll on our streets and sidewalks,” the mayor told 100 people packed into the front half of the main dining room of The Otesaga. “We have areas of the village that haven’t seen any repairs to sidewalks in 30 years. “This impact to our infrastructure is important and expensive,” she continued. “We have a waste-water treatment plant that was built in 1967 and designed to used for 20 years. And we are now in our 41st year.” But this was no speech of surrender. Quite the opposite. With no help forthcoming from the County of Otsego, which reaps great revenue from the Cooperstown-fueled sales tax and bed tax but gives little back, Waller renewed her call to take the village’s case to Albany The mayor declared her 2025 Planning Commission, named at the village trustees’ reorganization meeting the week before, will go full speed ahead in an effort to convert the Village of Cooperstown into the City of Cooperstown. A City of Cooperstown could levy its own sales tax, its own bed tax, its own entertainment tax – $1 a head on the 350,000 a year who go through the Hall of Fame turnstile, for instance. The mayor’s husband, Bill, is chairing the 2025 Commission, and he said he is assembling a team – a lawyer, a financial expert, a lobbyist, businesspeople – to press the city-making campaign, and that this will be the first item on the commission’s agenda. In spadework done so far, he said, has only dramatized the inequity between New York State’s cities and villages. The Village of Hempstead on Long Island, for instance, has 51,000 citizens. The City of Tonawanda, outside Buffalo, has 16,000. And yet the city receives 10 times more aid than the village. He recognizes the obstacles – the state has no financial incentive to create more cities, and thus have to expand its pool of aid – but believes the challenge facing Cooperstown, and the revered position it holds in American life, make it a special case. Much of the mayor’s speech was praiseful – of John Cankar, who has kept the beleaguered sewer plant in tip-top condition, of Sewer Committee chairman Ted Peters, of the staff at village hall – but she kept coming back to the deterioration. And people from elsewhere are unaware and astonished by the state of affairs, she said, reporting a recent meeting she had with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in Oneonta. “Senator Schumer was amazed that we, the main attraction, we, the shining jewel in the crown of the region, don’t get any tax income from all we do.” If Cooperstown gets help, she said, “we may actually keep away the day that our sewer and water, our infrastructure, our streets and sidewalks are so bad that the visitors start to notice, are appalled and tell their fiends how bad Cooperstown has become. “The infrastructure could crumble so much that businesses are affected, homeowners don’t want to do improvements or can’t and see the downward slide about to begin. “The impact to this area would be terrible. If the region’s main attraction became run down, rough around the edges, it simply would not be Cooperstown anymore. “While I say this cannot happen, I must remind everyone of areas that were overdeveloped out of control, lost their attraction, lost their way.” Last fall’s study by Notre Dame architectural students observed the beginning of what Waller fears, she said. When the report came in and she read parts of it, she told the gathering, “It was like a dagger in my heart.”  Once Again, World Finds Our Novelist Dana SpiottaCHERRY VALLEY William Styron, Ralph Ellison, Anne Sexton and, now, Dana Spiotta. The National Book Award finalist – for “Eat The Document,” her second novel, published in 2006 – will leave Cherry Valley this September for 10 months at the American Academy in Rome which, since 1896, has been giving fellowships to writers, architects and scholars to do their particular thing in the ancient center of arts and culture while interacting with other stimulating personalities and minds. “We are going to come back,” Dana said emphatically the other day when the news got out about the fellowship. (She had gone down to New York City Thursday, April 10, for the official orientation.) “We consider Cherry Valley home.” She and husband Clem Coleman operate the Rose & Kettle on Lancaster Street, and they plan to close the restaurant when this summer season is over and reopen it in time for the 2009 summer season. For Dana, who spent a year in school in Italy when she was 12, this means “more writing time for me,” but also an opportunity to view American society from “a different perspective.” Clem, who spent his junior year while at Temple at the Tyler School of the Arts in Rome, is likewise looking forward to the return. He and Dana last paid a visit to the Italian capital before buying the Rose & Kettle and moving to Otsego County from New York City eight years ago. The idea is to put daughter Agnes, 4, in pre-school there in hopes she’ll be fluent in Italian by the time the family returns. (“She’ll be translating for me,” said her mother.) The Rome Prize – specifically, Spiotta is receiving the Joseph Brodsky prize through the Drue Heinz Trust – range up to $24,000 and are awarded after a national competition. The Rome academy – founded in 1894 and chartered by Congress in 1905 – selects two fellows from various disciplines, but the two literature prize winners are selected by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Annually, 30 fellowships in all are awarded. Dana is working on a novel that, as is her practice, she declines to discuss until it is complete. (Her husband, Clem, had expressed some concern to her about gun catalogues coming to her in the mail, only later learning it was research for “Eat the Document,” based on a Kathy-Boudin-like scenario.) The other literature prize winner next year will be Brad Kessler, who will be doing the final edit on his fourth novel, “The Goat Diaries,” and starting a new novel. At 99, Otesaga Plans 100th Birthday Party  COOPERSTOWN The Otesaga opens Tuesday, April 22, for its 99th year, but General Manager John Irvin and his executive team are already looking ahead a year – to the revered resort’s 100th birthday in 2009. “We may be the only hotel – if not, one of a handful – open for 100 years and still under the original ownership,” said Irvin. He holds up a copy of the newsletter from The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. It dates to 1887, but look, the Woodfill family has owned it only since 1933, a mere 75 years. The Otesaga, built by Edward S. and Sterling C. Clark, is owned today by Jane Forbes Clark, granddaughter of Stephen C. Clark, younger brother to Edward and Sterling. Irvin began brainstorming with his managers last fall on how to appropriately mark the upcoming landmark in hoteling history – “no idea is bad,” he told them – and they came up with an enticing menu. Discussion quickly centered around an anniversary weekend a year from now, and the idea will be to harken back to the original opening to the degree possible. The chefs are researching menus; that weekend, they will only be preparing dishes that would have been in vogue a century ago. The hotel band will only play songs that were current in 1909. The bar will serve only the most popular cocktails of that day. But here’s the clincher: That weekend, The Otesaga will honor the rates on any bill presented from any year of the hotel’s history, Irvin said. That’s going to be a real bargain for some people. Irvin reached across his desk to publicity material from 1957: the Full American Plan – food and lodging – cost $14 a day. With a lake view, $20. “We have guests who have been coming here for 30, 35 years,” said the general manager, so there’s no doubt will be many who will be able to capitalize on the offer, which is the intent. “These guests are like family.” The Otesaga’s New York City public relations firm, Nancy J. Friedman Public Relations, which specializes in luxury hotels, is developing a plan to get the word out. We should start seeing stories about the upcoming anniversary pop up in the national press in the months ahead. Be assured this is not the full extent of the celebration. Irvin and his staff, in consultation with the owner, are still hatching ideas. A New York champagne has been ordered in special bottles etched with a specially designed logo. The hotel’s California vineyard will be using labels with the special logo. (Naturally, all stationery and printed matter will be reprinted with the anniversary insignia as well.) The New York Press Association, the 600-weekly professional organization, was the first organization to hold a conference at The Otesaga. And it is planning its fall conference in 2009 on the shores of Glimmerglass. While much has changed in the world at large, much has not inside The Otesaga. Irvin reaches across to the resort’s twice-yearly newsletter to guests. The cover is two juxtaposed photos of the ballroom; the two versions, 10 decades apart, are almost identical. But some things have changed, for the better. Since Jane Clark took over in the mid-’90s, tens of millions have been spent bringing what had been a bit of an aging lady up to date. All the rooms were redone. There is air-conditioning throughout. The latest in safety features – sprinklers, alarms and the like – are in place throughout. You may remember a few years back when the hotel was enclosed in plastic: The building was being stripped down to bare wood for the first time since its completion. 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