Daily Star
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There's a story _ familiar to New York Yankees fans _ about how the team almost didn't draft Derek Jeter.
Jeter was a lanky shortstop out of Kalamazoo Central High in Michigan as the Yankees' brain trust was deciding which player to pick with the sixth choice in the first round in the 1992 amateur draft.
The Yankees' scouting director back then was Bill Livesey, who told scout Dick Groch he was worried that Jeter would choose to go to college and the team wouldn't be able to sign its top draft pick.
"I hear," said Livesey, "he's going to Michigan."
Groch, who had scouted Jeter extensively, was having none of it.
"He's not going to Michigan," Groch said. "The only place he's going is to Cooperstown."
We bring up this story not to praise the very praiseworthy Jeter or the prescient Groch, whose prediction will most certainly come true five years after the Yankees icon retires and becomes eligible for admittance into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The story is noteworthy for those of us who live in Cooperstown and its environs because it's a reminder of how much meaning there is in the name of this village in Upstate New York.
When Groch said Jeter is going to Cooperstown, the scout didn't have to explain what he was talking about. That one magic word meant he was predicting that the then-scrawny youngster would be such a superior player that he would someday merit induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Even casual fans would have known exactly what Groch was talking about had they been in that room in 1992.
For all its cultural and natural allure, Cooperstown is Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron and Sandy Koufax and Ty Cobb and all the other members of the Hall of Fame, who still only number 292 out of the thousands of major-league players through the decades.
On Sunday, during induction ceremonies, they will be joined by former outfielder Andre Dawson, along with retired umpire Doug Harvey and ex-manager Whitey Herzog on the biggest weekend in the most-famous hall of fame venue in the world.
For us, Hall of Fame Weekend is a reassuring and welcome event. In the last year, Oneonta lost the Soccer Hall of Fame and a minor-league baseball franchise, although college league teams in Oneonta and Cooperstown have filled the gap admirably.
It's nice to know that Cooperstown, with its stately dignity, is still the most important sports location in the whole country for at least one weekend each year.
We urge you to attend Saturday night's parade and Sunday's induction ceremony ... and enjoy.
