Ripken, Gwynn exude Cooperstown

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – It is the pleasant nature of this quaint little upstate village that makes it so easy to overlook the disconnect between truth and legend that allowed it to become the hometown of baseball history.

If baseball wasn’t invented here, it should have been.

Cooperstown is the place where fact and fiction have long been locked in a strange embrace – a town named for the family of one of America’s greatest storytellers and the site where baseball supposedly began, though nobody really believes that anymore.

In a strange sort of way, that’s what makes everything about this weekend seem so perfect. In an era when sports fans are struggling to decipher what’s real and what’s not, the legends who will enter baseball’s Hall of Fame today exude a welcome air of authenticity that should renew our faith about sports.

Cal Ripken played out his 21-year career without a whiff of impropriety. He redefined the shortstop position, rolled up the requisite career statistics and broke one of the game’s most hallowed records.

Tony Gwynn was a base hit machine, joining a pantheon of pure hitters that stretches from Ty Cobb to Ted Williams to Hall of Fame outcast Pete Rose and beyond. He also was – and remains – one of the great ambassadors of baseball.

It is harmless fun to debate the true significance of Cooperstown in the ever-evolving historical timeline of baseball, but no one who will crowd onto that field at the Clark Sports Complex today (weather permitting) has to wonder whether either of this year’s Hall of Fame inductees is the real deal.