Cooperstown

The Hall of Fame opened here in 1939 because a commission had concluded that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in a Cooperstown pasture in 1839. That conclusion was wrong - the sport evolved from English bat-and-ball games and Doubleday was not even in the village that year - and the Hall itself now says so plainly. The museum stayed regardless and is a serious one: plaques for the inducted, the game's documentary record, and rotating exhibitions, including sustained treatment of the Negro Leagues and the segregation that produced them. The village around it is Otsego Lake, the Fenimore Art Museum with a strong American folk and Native art collection, and the Farmers' Museum.

What you'll find

• The plaque gallery - the inducted players and figures.
• A founding myth the museum itself refutes - Doubleday did not invent it.
• Negro Leagues exhibitions - treated at length.
• Fenimore and the Farmers' Museum - the village's other two collections.

When to go

May to October; induction weekend in July is the peak. A full day.

What to expect

Induction weekend overwhelms a village of two thousand - book far ahead or avoid it. There is no useful public transport. Youth tournament season fills accommodation for weeks. Winter is very quiet.

Nearby

Otsego Lake is at the village edge; Howe Caverns is east.

Key facts