8:30 AM – 02:00 PM

A tradition for families and friends featuring historic and contemporary maple-sugaring demonstrations, children’s activities and more. A full pancake breakfast is served from 8:30 am to 1 pm.

Children’s activities take place in the Filer’s Corners Schoolhouse throughout the day and maple cooking demonstrations are held in the More House. Visitors have a taste of jack wax, hot maple syrup poured over snow! The blacksmith is also working in his shop: stop in to watch a true craftsman.

In addition, the Empire State Carousel, a favorite attraction at The Museum, is open from 9 am – 2 pm. You can find spring items, unique gifts, crafts, and books at The Farmers’ Museum Store and Todd’s General Store open 9 am – 2 pm. Delicious local maple products will also be for sale.

The Farmers Museum
5775 State Hwy 80
Cooperstown, NY 13326
Telephone: 607-547-1450

8:30 AM – 02:00 PM

A tradition for families and friends featuring historic and contemporary maple-sugaring demonstrations, children’s activities and more. A full pancake breakfast is served from 8:30 am to 1 pm.

Children’s activities take place in the Filer’s Corners Schoolhouse throughout the day and maple cooking demonstrations are held in the More House. Visitors have a taste of jack wax, hot maple syrup poured over snow! The blacksmith is also working in his shop: stop in to watch a true craftsman.

In addition, the Empire State Carousel, a favorite attraction at The Museum, is open from 9 am – 2 pm. You can find spring items, unique gifts, crafts, and books at The Farmers’ Museum Store and Todd’s General Store open 9 am – 2 pm. Delicious local maple products will also be for sale.

The Farmers Museum
5775 State Hwy 80
Cooperstown, NY 13326
Telephone: 607-547-1450

8:30 AM – 02:00 PM

A tradition for families and friends featuring historic and contemporary maple-sugaring demonstrations, children’s activities and more. A full pancake breakfast is served from 8:30 am to 1 pm.

Children’s activities take place in the Filer’s Corners Schoolhouse throughout the day and maple cooking demonstrations are held in the More House. Visitors have a taste of jack wax, hot maple syrup poured over snow! The blacksmith is also working in his shop: stop in to watch a true craftsman.

In addition, the Empire State Carousel, a favorite attraction at The Museum, is open from 9 am – 2 pm. You can find spring items, unique gifts, crafts, and books at The Farmers’ Museum Store and Todd’s General Store open 9 am – 2 pm. Delicious local maple products will also be for sale.

The Farmers Museum
5775 State Hwy 80
Cooperstown, NY 13326
Telephone: 607-547-1450

8:30 AM – 02:00 PM

A tradition for families and friends featuring historic and contemporary maple-sugaring demonstrations, children’s activities and more. A full pancake breakfast is served from 8:30 am to 1 pm.

Children’s activities take place in the Filer’s Corners Schoolhouse throughout the day and maple cooking demonstrations are held in the More House. Visitors have a taste of jack wax, hot maple syrup poured over snow! The blacksmith is also working in his shop: stop in to watch a true craftsman.

In addition, the Empire State Carousel, a favorite attraction at The Museum, is open from 9 am – 2 pm. You can find spring items, unique gifts, crafts, and books at The Farmers’ Museum Store and Todd’s General Store open 9 am – 2 pm. Delicious local maple products will also be for sale.

The Farmers Museum
5775 State Hwy 80
Cooperstown, NY 13326
Telephone: 607-547-1450

5:00 – 7:00 PM

An evening of music, food, games and contests sure to keep your feet stomping and your heart pumping.

Come hear live music from local favorite Bourbon & Branch as well as the Cooperstown High School Jazz Band.  Enjoy games and activities such as Hula-Hoop races, face painting, and even a limbo contest.  There will be goody bags with masks to decorate, beads and more. Partake in food and drink with sales to benefit the Cooperstown High School Jazz Band. 

Heat Up the Night takes place in The Farmers’ Museum’s Louis C. Jones Center. Come hear live music, play games, and enjoy an abundance of food and drink.

Tickets are $5.00 (ages 7 and up). Children 6 and under are free!

The Farmers Museum
5775 State Hwy 80
Cooperstown, NY 13326
Telephone: 607-547-1450

It was the day before Induction Sunday, so this moment in the first-base dugout at Doubleday Field was a rare chance to sit down.

One-hundred yards away, the Hall of Fame Awards Presentation was just getting started. On the stage was Terry Cashman, telling the assembled crowd about how he came to write his classic piece of baseball nostalgia “Talkin’ Baseball (Willie, Mickey and The Duke).”

I was tired, I was hot (Saturday featured another day of 90-plus degree temperatures in Cooperstown) and I was thinking about the next item on my to-do list.

And then Terry Cashman started to sing.

The Whiz Kids had won it; Bobby Thomson had done it; and Yogi read the comics all the while…

I have never felt tears well up that quickly.

We’re talking baseball; Kluszewski, Campanella…

Suddenly, it was 1981 all over again. I was 12 years old, in love with this game and its history, and Terry Cashman was singing to me. I decoded each line of the song like it was a treasure.

Talkin’ baseball; The Man and Bobby Feller…

The first time I heard that song, I knew there were kindred spirits out there. Others felt the same love, and Cashman had captured that feeling. In the days before the internet and when ESPN was in its infancy, the song was a unifying force.

The Scooter, The Barber and the Newk; They knew them all from Boston to Dubuque…

All the controversies, trials and quibbling, it’s all just background noise. This game can still be perfect; and the memory of it can still make me cry.

It was all on display this weekend in Cooperstown.

Especially Willie, Mickey and The Duke…

Thank you, Terry, for giving us fans our piece of history. And thank you for coming to Cooperstown.

Craig Muder is the director of communications for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

It’s a meeting of the minds. Robert Faller, Director of Sales & Marketing for the elegant Otesaga Resort Hotel in Cooperstown, orchestrates the meetings and conferences that take place at this timeless, classic resort as skilled and passionately as the baseball greats in the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame down the road.

            And he has a secret.

            “About half of the meetings that take place at the Otesaga do something other than baseball,” he says. That’s incredible, considering the resort’s location in a village that is a shrine to the sport.

            So what do the other 50 percent come here for?         

            “They want the arts,” he says. And they’ve come to the right place.

            The Glimmerglass Opera Festival, a world-class summer opera festival located a couple of octaves away from The Otesaga, gives culture lovers something to sing about. “Some of the groups we book at the resort go to Glimmerglass for three or four performances,” says Faller.

            The Fenimore Art Museum, another Cooperstown icon, exhibits an ambitious collection of American, folk and American Indian art. And it’s not just Fenimore’s art that wows them. “We can arrange an outdoor reception on Fenimore’s expansive lawn and terrace that overlooks Otsego Lake,” he says giddily.

            But for those meeting planners who are drawn to The Otesaga in part because of Cooperstown’s baseball legacy, The Otesaga pitches them a perfect game plan. “We’ll have dinner right in the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Hall of Plaques,” says Faller. “And, we can schedule a six-inning game right on legendary Doubleday Field for them to play. We’ll contract with a Hall of Famer to pitch.” The mentality is that if you build it they will come. 

            Other activities that groups love include glo ball at night (with a DJ), a golf outing on the celebrated 72-par Leatherstocking Golf Course, skeet shooting, and a tour of local Brewery Ommegang.

            Then there’s that one meeting that sticks out in Faller’s memory. Called “Bounty of the Harvest”, one of Cooperstown’s most popular attractions, The Farmers’ Museum, was transformed for a festive evening with bales of hay, square dancing, carriage rides, horses, seasonal foods and local beers, cheese, flowers and local grass-fed beef and ham.

            The Otesaga has 12 meeting and conference rooms that can accommodate groups up to 380 people. While the summer months are busiest, the shoulder months (April-June & September-November) offer great value, says Faller. Another value-added season is the winter (December-April); while the resort is closed to social guests, Faller says they open about 15 times to accommodate meetings and weddings utilizing 60 rooms or more.

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But now that the 2011 All-Star Game is in the books, Cooperstown is officially on the clock. For almost two weeks, all of baseball will be abuzz about the July 24 Hall of Fame Induction. But there’s so much more to Hall of Fame Weekend than just one day.

The weekend begins Friday, July 22, with PLAY Ball with Ozzie Smith, when The Wizard and friends Rod Carew, Andre Dawson and Whitey Herzog will share tips and stories with participants in a Museum fundraiser. To reserve your spot, call 607-547-0397.

Then on Saturday, July 23, fans can listen as Hall of Famers like Ralph Kiner, Paul Molitor, Gaylord Perry and others participate in the brand new Hall of Fame Spotlight Series – a series of mini roundtable discussions – at Cooperstown’s Doubleday Field from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. At 4:30 p.m. at Doubleday Field, the new Hall of Fame Awards Presentation will honor award winners Bill Conlin (J.G. Taylor Spink Award), Roland Hemond (Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award) and Dave Van Horne (Ford C. Frick Award) as the returning Hall of Famers gather at one of baseball’s most beautiful ballparks.

And immediately following the Awards Presentation, the Hall of Fame Parade of Legends will take the Hall of Famers down Cooperstown’s historic Main Street, ending in front of the Hall of Fame. The Spotlight Series, Awards Presentation and Parade of Legends are all free.

Sunday’s Induction Ceremony will be held rain or shine at 1:30 p.m. at the Clark Sports Center on Susquehanna Avenue, just one mile south of the Hall of Fame. And on Monday, July 25, Alomar, Blyleven and Gillick will reconvene at the Clark Sports Center for a 10:30 a.m. Voices of the Game – Induction Memories program where the inductees will share their memories from the weekend. Tickets are available to participants in the Hall of Fame’s Membership Program by calling 607-547-0397.

It’s baseball’s best weekend, in the town where baseball’s heart beats the strongest. And now that the 2011 All-Star Game is history, it’s time for the ultimate history lesson to begin in Cooperstown.

Enjoy and old fashioned family carnival – all day. Take part in 19th century contests like sack races, a watermelon eating contest, and a rolling pin toss. Play games like Ping Pong Ball Toss into the Cup, Bean Bag Toss, Find the needle in the haystack (find pencils hidden in the haystack). Make newspaper hats. Toss, and keep, the skillet ($5 per person – adults only) in this odd contest of cookware flinging.

Witness the excitement of a Pie Eating Contest sponsored by the Fly Creek Cider Mill and Orchard at 2 pm (Limited to the first 30 entries). Tour the museum on a horse-drawn wagon. Ride the Empire State Carousel. Cover your ears for the Militia Musters from 11 am to 4 pm and brush up on your history with a reading of the Declaration of Independence at 1 pm. There will even be puppet shows to entertain you through the day!

For the full schedule of the day’s events, please visit our website
Start Time: 10:00
Date: 2011-07-04

There will be free ice cream for the first 500 visitors (sponsored by Huffs Ice Cream) and $2.00 off admission for everyone! Kids 6 and under, NYSHA Members, as well as active and retired career military personnel are always free.

Actual ballpark franks (with all the fixings) from baseball stadiums around the country will be on sale. Try them all and vote for your favorite! Featured franks include…

Yankee Dog – Nathan’s Frank
Fenway Frank – Kayem Frank on New England Bun
Pirate’s Hot Italian – Hot Italian Sausage, Peppers and Onions
Brewer’s Brat – Beef Brat, Stadium Sauce ,Kraut, Mustard
Dodger Dog – Foot Long, Relish and Mustard
Rockie Dog – Foot Long, Grilled Peppers, Diced Onions and Kraut

Chicago White Sox – Polish Sausage Red and Green Grilled Peppers
At 3:00 pm, the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival presents the National Jazz Museum in Harlem All-Stars. Swing to classic jazz sounds including the works of Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman bands. Concert tickets $15/student; $25 adult.
Start Time: 10:00
Date: 2011-07-03