Doubleday Field
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| Location | Cooperstown, New York |
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| Capacity | 9,791 |
| Field size | Left field: 296ft Left-center field: 336ft Center field: 390ft Right-center field: 350ft Right field: 312ft |
| Surface | Grass |
| Construction | |
| Opened | 1920 |
| Expanded | 1924, 1939 |
| Tenants | |
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MLB Hall of Fame game Cooperstown Hawkeyes (2010–present) |
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MLB Hall of Fame game
Doubleday Field is a baseball stadium in Cooperstown, New York named for Abner Doubleday and located two village blocks from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
The grounds have been used for baseball since 1920, on what was Elihu Phinney's farm. A wooden grandstand was built in 1924, later replaced by a steel and concrete grandstand built in 1939 by the Works Project Administration. Subsequent expansion has increased seating capacity to 9,791 spectators.
Each year from 1940 to 2008, Doubleday Field hosted the Hall of Fame Game. Originally a contest between "old-timers" teams, it later became an exhibition game between two major league squads. Traditionally, the game was held during the annual induction weekend of the nearby Baseball Hall of Fame, but in later years it was scheduled in May or June, to accommodate the participating teams' travel schedules.
As MLB's last remaining in-season exhibition game, its results did not count in the official standings, and substitute players were generally used to avoid injury to starters. The curiosity factor of two teams from different leagues playing each other in this game outside of a World Series or spring training situation was eventually removed in 1997 with the launch of interleague play, further reducing the game's cachet.
On January 29, 2008, Major League Baseball announced that the final Hall of Fame Game would be played on June 16, 2008 between the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres, citing "the inherent challenges" of scheduling teams in the modern day as the reason for ending the annual contest. However, the contest was canceled on account of rain.
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