Doubleday Field
Near Cooperstown, New York
Two short blocks from the Hall of Fame sits a small ballpark with an outsized claim: Doubleday Field, often called the birthplace of baseball, even though baseball was not actually born here. Organized baseball has been played on this ground since nineteen twenty, when it was still part of Elihu Phinney's farm. On September sixth of that year the field officially opened, and the president of the National League, John Heydler, umpired the first inning himself.
A wooden grandstand went up in nineteen twenty-four. Then, as Cooperstown prepared to celebrate baseball's supposed one hundredth birthday, the Works Progress Administration replaced it with the steel and concrete grandstand you see today, dedicated on May sixth, nineteen thirty-nine. For decades this was hallowed ground for fans.
From nineteen forty to two thousand seven, two major league teams traveled here each summer to play the Hall of Fame Game, an exhibition on the very field where legend said it all began. Today anyone can still rent Doubleday Field and stand at home plate where thousands have stood before. It is a modest brick and grass ballpark in a residential neighborhood, but on a summer afternoon, with the hills rising beyond the outfield fence, it feels like the beating heart of the whole village.
