Latest / Retro Sports Radio: Classic Games from History / 1939 • Baseball Clip • Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis Opens Hall of Fame

Transcript

1939 • Baseball Clip • Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis Opens Hall of Fame · Retro Sports Radio: Classic Games from History

• 0:00
  Mr. Commissioner, will you officially open the baseball museum?
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  Ladies and gentlemen, I now declare the National Baseball Museum
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  and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperston, New York,
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  the birthplace of baseball, open.
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  May it forever stand as a symbol of clean play and good sportsmanship.
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  Ladies and gentlemen, the place of privilege of being the first
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  to walk out of the Hall of Museum of Baseball is Connie Mack,
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  and now he's in front of the microphone.
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  I feel greatly honored in being here today
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  where our first national game was started by Abner Doubleday.
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  And now the twelve players in the Baseball Hall of Fame,
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  elected by the Baseball Writers Association,
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  Wee Willie Keeler, he hit him where he ate,
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  Christy Mathewson, baseball's big six, master of the fadeaway
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  and famous pitcher for the Giants,
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  Honus Wagner, the flying Dutchman,
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  the greatest shortstop in the game's history.
• 1:05
  Ladies and gentlemen, I was born in 1874.
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  This organization started in 1876.
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  And when I was just a kid, I said, I hope someday I'll be up there playing in this league.
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  And by chance I did.
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  Connie Mack, the gentleman that preceded me here at the mic,
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  I remember walking 14 miles just to see him play ball for Pittsburgh.
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  However, I want to thank you for being able to come here today.
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  The next memorial to come before the mic is Tris Speaker,
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  greatest defensive player of all time and a great hitter.
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  Thank you, Shelley, and I'm very happy indeed to have been chosen by the sports writers
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  as a member of this great hall of fame. Thank you.
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  Nap Lajoie, baseball's greatest second baseman and a model of grace.
• 2:04
  Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very glad to be here today and to meet all the old timers.
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  The next is Cy Young, and we must go into superlatives on Cy Young,
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  for he is the only pitcher who has ever won 500 baseball games.
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  Nothing pleases me better than to be about and see and know
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  that the young generation today is following our footsteps.
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  This is about the proudest day of my life.
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  Why, I'd be glad to be the bat boy for such a team as this.
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  Thank you very much.
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  In my dreams I often think what I could do today with a team like they were,
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  if they could be now what they were then.
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  I would have no mistakes to be worrying about,
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  or when they hit those line drives off me I would have no trouble wondering who was going to get them.
• 2:54
  I hope someday that some of the young fellows that are coming into the game
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  will know how it feels to be picked on the hall of fame.
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  I know the old boys back in there, we were just talking it over.
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  Some had been here long before my time.
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  They got on it and I worked hard and I got on it.
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  And I hope that the coming generation of the young boys today,
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  that they'll work hard and also be on it.
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  As my old friend Cy Young says, I hope it goes another hundred years
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  and the next hundred years will be the greatest.
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  You know, it seems like an anniversary for me too and I'm surely glad
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  it's a pleasure for me to come up here and be picked also on the hall of fame.