Phillies news and rumors 8/17: Bryce Harper wants MLB to play Hall of Fame game in Cooperstown

Bryce Harper would like to play in Cooperstown. (Photo by Kyle Ross/Icon Sportswire)

With the Philadelphia Phillies set to play at Williamsport’s Bowman Field in the Little League Classic on Sunday, Bryce Harper and his teammates are pitching their idea for Major League Baseball’s next destination game.

On Wednesday night, Harper discussed his desire for MLB to host a Hall of Fame game, taking place in Cooperstown, New York, the site of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

“I think it’s pretty cool being able to play in different areas, different countries,” the superstar slugger said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Alex Coffey, “and I think the next one we were all talking about would be a Hall of Fame game. We think that would be pretty cool.”

MLB has hosted a number of these destination games in recent years at different venues in various regions, countries and continents, including the Little League Classic, the Field of Dreams Game, the London Series and the Mexico City Series. The games and areas visited by MLB will only continue to grow into 2024 with the expansion of the MLB World Tour into Seoul, South Korea, as well as the game scheduled for next June at Rickwood FIeld in Birmingham, Alabama, to honor the history of the Negro Leagues.

As MLB plans more of these games and events for future years, Harper suggested a major-league game to be played in Cooperstown the weekend of the Hall of Fame’s induction ceremony in July. The historic Doubleday Field, which has held games since the 1920s and finished its grandstand construction in 1939, would host the event.

(Waz8, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

While Doubleday Field did hold an annual interleague exhibition game from 1940 to 2008, the over century-old stadium is not quite major-league ready, as Harper noted. With a capacity under 10,000 and no lights, the ballpark would almost certainly require a bit of work and expansion to host a regular-season Hall of Fame game. But as shown by the work done to Bowman Field in the past and currently underway at Rickwood Field, MLB has shown a commitment to renovating these older stadiums when it decides to use them as a host site.

And if Doubleday Field could get the necessary improvements, Harper would welcome a game in Cooperstown, a village he played in as a kid. Before he was a high school phenom or a major-league MVP, Harper was a 12-year-old playing travel ball at Cooperstown Dreams Park with his friends, competing against other young players from all over the country in the fabled birthplace of baseball.

In a similar way to the Little League Classic that takes place during the Little League World Series, Harper believes a major-league game in Cooperstown could help bring out some of the same excitement and mystique that he experienced in his youth.

“Being able to do that in the summer time was a lot of fun for us,” he said. “Hopefully we can go to Cooperstown.”

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