Petroskey Out, Idelson In at The Baseball Hall of Fame

A few hours ago, I saw the news on Yahoo! Sports that Baseball Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey had resigned:

Dale Petroskey resigned Tuesday as president of the baseball Hall of Fame after its board’s executive committee found he “failed to exercise proper fiduciary responsibility.”

The Hall’s executive committee said it found there were “other business judgments that were not in the best interest of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.”

The Hall did not detail Petroskey’s actions. Spokesman Brad Horn said the executive committee felt they weren’t criminal and that he did not benefit personally from them.

When I worked at the Hall of Fame as an intern six summers ago, my run-ins with Petroskey were infrequent and unmemorable - about the only thing I can say about the man is that he constantly had a huge smile plastered all over his face and gave off the vibe of someone who had spent a lot of time in politics.

His acting replacement, Jeff Idelson, however, is someone with whom I had a few more interactions. It's good to see him achieve such a lofty position, interim or not. Here are a few reasons why I remember Idelson fondly:

1. Whenever a milestone was near, Idelson was the Hall of Fame representative dispatched to the site to pick up any necessary artifacts for the museum's collection. One of the more fascinating moments in my life up to that point was watching the 2002 All-Star Game on TV with a group of fellow interns and seeing Idelson in the dugout, slapping a player on the back after a particularly good play. We felt like Will Ferrell in "Elf" when he finds out "Santa" is coming to the store: "I KNOW HIM!"
2. During Hall of Fame Weekend, interns in all departments rotated through a variety of responsibilities. Once or twice, I ended up in the press room, where members of the media came to write their stories and make small talk*. I don't know if anyone remembers this, but that was the year the living Hall of Famers drafted a letter asking Bud Selig to do anything in his power to avoid a potentially devastating labor stoppage (or something like that - I haven't seen the letter in awhile). When the letter was released, I was working the press room and Idelson came flying in and told me to go make twenty copies. I went to the copier in the other room, too slowly, I guess, because about thirty seconds later he came tearing in and said something along the lines of, "Gotta get moving!" Great energy.
3. My goal at the time I left the Hall was to write a broad paper on the history of Jewish players in the game of baseball (it eventually became a rather crappy paper on Hank Greenberg). With that in mind, I asked Idelson how to go about speaking with the various Jewish players who were still active at the time. He was terrific about giving advice and pointing me in the right direction. His actions nearly helped me land an interview with Gabe Kapler and did get me a few minutes with Arthur Richman**, who I believe was a senior VP with the Yankees at the time. He also took the time to answer a few questions about his own experiences, which I thought went above and beyond the call of duty.

*This is where I met Jayson Stark. He and a few other writers were talking about Harry Kalas - this was the year Kalas received the Ford C. Frick Award - and noted that By Saam had also been honored by the Hall of Fame several years earlier. This led him to ask me, research intern extraordinaire, if any other partners had each won the Frick Award. It took me two days and a lot of parsing of Total Baseball's Announcer Roster, but I eventually managed to get him a list of possible combinations that was horrifying in its inaccuracy. As he was leaving and I pressed the hand-written sheet of paper into his hand, he said he's look it over and maybe use it in his column. Thank God he didn't.

**The Richman interview would have been a total waste if not for one thing that I'm pretty sure I mentioned in an interview with Pyle of List last year - during our talk, Richman casually mentioned that he had to leave soon because the owners and players union were announcing a new agreement that would avoid a strike. Probably the only "breaking news"-type story that I'll ever get, and all I could do was hang up the phone, turn to my girlfriend, and pass along the good news. If only I'd had a blog back then.