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Art in New York City, where he was president and chairman of the board between 1939 and 1946, some people referred to him as “the mortician.” Clark ran his businesses and philanthropies with a high hand, but no one questioned his rectitude. “He was formal and aloof,” writes Weber, “but he was driven by his morality, his perpetual wish to do what was best, to advance a good cause and to serve others.”
    When it came to modern art, Clark was no dilettante: he was a true expert, and he put the stamp of his collector’s taste and judgment on the museum he led. Baseball was a different story. He lacked the expertise—and the desire—to act as a super curator.
    What he did do was to make sure that the new museum to be built on Main Street next to Doubleday Field—a two-story, colonial redbrick edifice—would be a tasteful and elegant addition to the village. The museum had 1,200 square feet of exhibition space, large enough to house an initial collection that included a baseball from Cy Young’s 500th win, one of Christy Mathewson’s gloves, a uniform donated by Ty Cobb, and a pair of Babe Ruth’s shoes, as well as the centerpiece Doubleday Baseball, a lopsided icon stitched from poor rags and a very rich imagination.
    On June 12, 1939, the Hall of Fame held its grand opening. Frick had done a tremendous job of public relations. Special trains were engaged in New York City to bring fifteen thousand fans to Coopers-town. Baseball heroes roamed the town signing autographs (nobody dreamed at the time of charging for them) and chatting with the crowd. Babe Ruth bought cigars at the village drugstore and stopped at the local barbershop for a shave, but was too impatient to wait his turn. Over at the post office, a team of seventy, led by James Farley, the postmaster general of the United States, sold three-cent stamps commemorating baseball’s hundredth birthday. Microphones for a national radio hookup stood on a high platform in front of the museum door. At the stroke of noon, Charles J. Doyle, president of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, opened the proceedings: “Today in Cooperstown, New York, home of baseball, we gather in reverence to the game’s immortals—living and dead . . .”
    A famous photo captured ten of the eleven living players inducted into the Hall of Fame that day: Eddie Collins, Babe Ruth, Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Tris Speaker, Napoleon Lajoie, George Sisler, and Walter Johnson. Ty Cobb arrived late and missed getting into the picture. Christy Mathewson and Wee Willie Keeler were dead. Connie Mack was in the photo, too; he was one of thirteen foundational figures inducted. *
    Naturally, Henry Chadwick and A. G. Spalding were among them. Their dispute, more than thirty years earlier, was responsible for Cooperstown’s selection as the venue of baseball’s nativity. Alexander Cartwright was selected, too. This was a matter of some delicacy for the Hall. Everyone knew that Cartwright had been the founder of one of the earliest formal baseball teams, the New York Knickerbockers, in the 1840s—reason enough to include him in the Hall. But in the run-up to the centennial celebration, Commissioner Landis received a letter from Cartwright’s grandson Bruce, pointing out that his grandfather had written the rules for baseball in 1845, and he had diagrams and written notes to prove it. This came under the heading of news Landis couldn’t use; he already had his creation story, and he was sticking to it. Landis kept the story hushed up and tried to pacify the Cartwright camp by making sure their candidate was among the earliest inductees. But even this might not have been enough to prevent a scandal at the ceremony itself had Cartwright’s grandson and loudest booster not died three months before the Hall’s dedication. Oddly, Doubleday himself was not inducted in 1939, and never has been.
    Over the years, the implausibility of the Doubleday scenario became