The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a wonderful place. It’s located in the little town of Cooperstown, in the middle of New York state, at the base of Otsego Lake, equidistant from Schenectady and Binghamton, which is to say in the middle of nowhere.
That remoteness, among other things, is its lasting charm. Cooperstown is cradled by hills and fields and nestled, as purely and sweetly as you ever would want, in the arms of baseball.
And baseball, my friends, is America.
I say all this as preamble to making my 2025 Hall of Fame ballot public because everybody ought to know whom the voters choose to be honored in the place that showcases Babe Ruth, Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and, yep, Gaylord Perry, who cheated constantly, doctoring his pitches with Vaseline, emery boards and spit, and Orlando Cepeda, who served 10 months in prison for drug smuggling.