Though nothing has been officially announced, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reports the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is expected to postpone this summer’s induction ceremony weekend until 2021.
Scheduled to take place July 24-26, the induction weekend in Cooperstown was projected to be one of the biggest celebrations in the history of the Hall thanks to Derek Jeter being one of the 2020 inductees.
Though there’s no way to know for sure now, the upstate New York town may have welcomed as many as 100,000 people over the weekend of the induction ceremony.
Now, thanks to uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, Hall of Fame board members will likely decide to combine the 2020 and 2021 Hall of Fame classes and push back the ceremony when they meet this week. Though it has been floated, Hall of Fame executives dismissed any idea of a virtual ceremony and are also unwilling to simply postpone the event for a few months for logistical reasons.
With 292,000 diagnosed COVID-19 cases in New York state, they really don’t have much of a choice even though the postponement could cost Cooperstown as much as $150 million in lost revenue.
It would be a shame to hold the ceremony and have previous living inductees, 38 of whom are 70 years or older, be unable to attend out of fear of endangering their lives to be at Cooperstown.
“How could you have an induction ceremony?’’ Hall of Famer Andre Dawson told USA Today. “I wouldn’t want to see it happen. You got to look at well-being of people. You look at the older guys that come here. Think about the crowd. It’s just way too risky. I know how important it is to the people in upstate New York for the induction, and how pleasurable it is to us to all of the Hall of Famers, but you can’t bring in everyone, not when people are dying at home.”
In addition to Jeter, Larry Walker, Ted Simmons and the late Marvin Miller were set to be inducted in 2020. In 2021, Curt Schilling is the lone favorite to be elected to the Hall, according to Nightengale.
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