Doubleday Field (Cooperstown)

Note: This page links to Doubleday Field, in Cooperstown, New York. For the field located in West Point, New York, see Doubleday Field (West Point).

Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, NY, is the home field of baseball. The game has been played on this land, two city blocks from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, since the early 1920s.

Named for Abner Doubleday when he was widely believed to have "founded" the game, it has never been the permanent home of any professional baseball team but hosts many amateur and some pro games.

The first grandstands were erected in 1924. The Works Progress Administration built the current park, which opened in 1939 and started hosting the annual Hall of Fame Game in 1940. Officially through 2008, the contest pitted two MLB teams in an in-season exhibition game. Arguably, the series ended in 2007; the 2008 game was scheduled and the gates were open but it was rained out - one of eight that weren't played for reasons ranging from weather to the 1981 strike to airplane trouble. Hall of Fame week often includes action involving pro teams or teams of retired pros.

Long marketed as the home field of baseball itself, it was thought no one team should call it home. However, in 2011, the eight-team Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League debuted - with the Cooperstown Hawkeyes playing home games here.

The pro franchise that ended the Affiliated Era as the Connecticut Tigers played one home game per season here from 1991 through 2010. The series began while the franchise was in nearby Oneonta, and ended after its first season in Connecticut.

No house baseball record seems to be available, but it is likely around 10,000. The village of Cooperstown says it seats 9,741, several sources give 9,800 as its capacity, and [of Doubleday] says it "regularly" sold out Hall of Fame games.

Doubleday Field appears in the closing scene of the film A League of Their Own (1992).