Hall's motto? Build it, and they will come

COOPERSTOWN (Scott Eyman) - My grandfather used to tell me about Tris Speaker. The Cleveland Indians centerfielder was so fast and had such an instinct for where the ball was going even before it was hit that he regularly positioned himself about 25 feet in back of second base. The scary thing was, nobody could recall a ball ever being hit over Speaker's head.

Speaker was among the first inductees into Baseball's Hall of Fame, built in Cooperstown, N.Y., for no other reason than the cultivation of a nonsensical myth about Abner Doubleday.

Jim Reisler's A Great Day in Cooperstown concerns itself with the process by which the hall was built, as well as the weekend of inductions on June 12, 1939.

Reisler cross-cuts between the back story — the organizers that made the hall a reality — and the weekend of the induction. He narrates all this smoothly enough, though some sloppy errors wrapped their fingers around my throat: Mary Pickford was married to Douglas Fairbanks Sr., not Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; George Gershwin died of a brain tumor, not a cerebral hemorrhage.

The weekend's highlight was a photograph that shows Babe Ruth, surrounded by other legends such as Honus Wagner, Cy Young, Connie Mack, Eddie Collins, Walter Johnson... and Tris Speaker. All the initial inductees are in the picture except Ty Cobb, who was late. When he finally showed up, he turned out to be far more charming than his reputation would have indicated.

The photo shows, among other things, the extent to which the gene pool has altered in this country. These faces are closer to the faces that stare out at us in Civil War daguerreotypes than they are to people you see on the street or on baseball fields today.

For the most part, these are raw-boned, jug-eared farm boys grown old, and they had a stamina to match their faces. Everybody talks about sports records that will never be broken — so far, Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak of 56 games has held up, but that is achievable. Johnson's record of three complete game shutouts in four days isn't, because no modern pitcher would be willing to start three times in four days.

That weekend in Cooperstown was the culmination of years of effort — first, to find the money in a farming town that had been ravaged first by the Depression, then by drought. The hall's founders also had to convince the retired ballplayers to part with their memorabilia. The ironic part is that the two men who did the most to bring the hall to Cooperstown — industrialist Stephen Clark and a social worker named Alexander Cleland — didn't really like baseball. It was just a way to promote tourism to the town they loved.

Letters didn't bring much response, so Cleland took a road trip and braced the men individually. Johnson responded by promising to rummage through some old trunks, while Napoleon Lajoie came through with the uniform and bat from his 3,000th hit. Cobb responded by saying he'd sold almost anything that was worth anything, hadn't heard anything about this Hall of Fame, and why were they bothering him anyway?

But the event itself was a great celebration and almost entirely positive, except for the brief, clipped speeches; all Walter Johnson said was, "I'm very proud to have my name enrolled in the Hall of Fame. And I'm very happy to have my name enrolled with these men."

The tragic Grover Cleveland Alexander, who was not only an alcoholic but epileptic as well, was indigent when he came to the ceremonies. Though he was only 52, he looked at least 15 years older. His reponse to his induction was "They gave me a tablet, but I can't eat any tablet."

The great shortstop Honus Wagner was broke, too, but that was because a business had gone south. An amiable man, he managed to recover when he got a job with the Pittsburgh Pirates and became a coach and roving goodwill ambassador.

Now, in Cooperstown, the original 11 inductees have been joined by 249 more. It's a place worth a visit, especially as the new baseball season begins.