Eliminating Hartwick baseball a sad story

If the appalling indifference with which Hartwick College eliminated its oldest sport hasn’t produced tears, it’s only because there’s no crying in baseball.

Does Hartwick’s financial condition so urgently require cost-cutting that the college couldn’t afford to provide current students with at least one more year of their sport, a year that would also offer the opportunity to celebrate baseball’s history at Hartwick?

The significance of baseball’s role in Hartwick’s history is symbolized by a photograph of the 1900 Hartwick Seminary Baseball Club, which hangs in the Binder Physical Education Center (unless it, too, has now been unceremoniously re[an error occurred while processing this directive]moved).

College officials cited the lack of on-campus facilities as a factor in the choice of sports to be eliminated. Yet, Hartwick’s reliance on an off-campus baseball facility, Damaschke Field, was far more privilege than hardship for the college players who appreciated playing on the home field of the New York-Penn League Oneonta Tigers.

Every time Hartwick players set foot on that field, they were treated to a history lesson from a ballpark named for Earnest "Dutch" Damaschke, whose many contributions to sports in Oneonta included serving as Hartwick’s first baseball coach in 1928.

Damaschke Field provided Hartwick players the unique opportunity to compete on grounds that once hosted a barnstorming Babe Ruth, as well as Oneonta Yankees farmhands Don Mattingly, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada and Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway.

Historian Jacques Barzun once observed, "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball." It’s sad that Hartwick is no longer interested in attracting students with a desire to learn baseball as Division III athletes. Yet, no tears will be shed, because there is no crying in baseball.

Gary Paslow, Schenectady