The successful opening of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum 85 years ago had plenty of pomp and circumstance.
Yet it was those behind-the-scenes people who helped make it happen in 1939.
For instance, as The Daily Star explained on June 24, 1999, “When Don Watson wanted to impress his fiancée, Frances, some 50 years ago, he took her on a private tour of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
“‘I had her and her brother with me, and when we got here, I opened the door,’ he said. ‘We went inside and she turned to her brother and said, ‘See, I told you he had the key.’
“Watson, 80, had the keys because he was the first employee hired by the fledgling institution when it opened in 1939.
“‘It was much, much smaller then and I did a little bit of everything,’ said Watson, a Cooperstown native. ‘I raised the flag in the morning, polished the brass, kept the cases clean, sold tickets, worked as a tour guide — whatever had to be done.’
“William Beattie was the director then and Watson was the staff. The Hall of Fame was open in good weather and closed in the winter. Watson worked there a couple of years, until war with Germany and Japan seemed inevitable, then he enlisted in the Army Signal Corps.”
Watson returned to Cooperstown after the war and worked two more years at the Hall of Fame. He married Frances and they moved to California to live and work.
The couple returned to visit Cooperstown in 1999, including a stop at the Hall of Fame.
“‘We knew the hall was going to get bigger, with players being inducted every year, but I never thought it would be anything like it is today,’ said Watson, a former Yankee fan who now roots for the Angels.
“During the return visit, Watson admired the new home run displays and interactive exhibits, but his favorite is a wooden statue of Joe Wood, a fictional baseball character, donated to the hall in its first year. The statue has been a standby in Rochester parades for years and was log a centerpiece at the hall.
“‘I polished that brass plaque at his feet for years and memorized what it said,’ Watson said. He then quoted: ‘Six decades Joe Wood in Rochester stood, and boosted the national game. He did all he could, so it’s fitting he should have a niche in the Hall of Fame.’”
As Don Watson witnessed the hall’s grand opening in 1939, toiling away, never seeking the limelight, others were also hard at work behind the big scenes.
As The Freeman’s Journal of June 21, 1939 reported, “The Baseball centennial three-cent postage stamp, declared by Postmaster General James A. Farley the most acceptable commemorative ever issued, brought a huge business to the Cooperstown Postoffice which handled the first-day sale.
“Complete figures announced yesterday by Postmaster Melvin C. Bundy showed a total of 623,500 stamps sold here the first day. From this number, 398,199 first-day covers were serviced.
“In addition to the regular force of seventeen employees at the local office who worked constantly for over two weeks on the covers, sixty-five temporary clerks were engaged in affixing stamps to the covers during the height of the rush. The staff continued until Thursday noon when it was felt that the regular force would be able to handle the balance.
“At the Baseball Centennial office, which handled the sale of first-day covers, in connection with the Leatherstocking Stamp club of Cooperstown, eight young women, in charge of Howard W. Potts, and several volunteers from the Stamp club also put in long and strenuous hours, handling the sales of the official cover, which reached the final total of 25,000. Of this number, approximately 20,000 were services, and the balance were distributed unserviced.”
On Wednesday, a baseball camp comes to Oneonta.