COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — You cannot leave behind a world crisis caused by a Russian madman with a visit to this hamlet founded in 1786. You can leave behind for a few hours the reality that baseball is in crisis, now that owners and players have decided to add not playing to a growing public lethargy.
The National Baseball Museum and Hall of Fame dates to 1939 and remains on Cooperstown's main street. The Hall is an independent nonprofit, not an arm of Major League Baseball. That's why as you walk through the place, you encounter displays covering the game's steroids era and an accounting of work stoppages that now has to be updated.
The lockout didn't matter much here Wednesday, the day for a visit to the National Museum for Tony Oliva, the first of seven 2022 inductees (on July 24) to have made a date for the Hall's offer of an "orientation."
