In Cooperstown, Obama touts international tourist plan

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — President Obama on Thursday became the first sitting president to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, traveling to the central section of New York to tout his administration's plan to boost international tourism.

Obama spoke for about 15 minutes to an invite-only crowd in the museum's famed Plaque Gallery, where he stood among 300 bronze plaques commemorating the legends of the sport.

The president Thursday signed a memorandum directing members of his administration to develop a plan to cut wait times for customs processing at the 15 largest U.S. airports, a move he said will help the country's reputation with foreign visitors.

"We want to bring in more visitors faster and more jobs faster," Obama said. "If they come into JFK faster, they come into LaGuardia faster, then they can get to Cooperstown faster. And they can start seeing Joe DiMaggio's glove faster. They can see Babe Ruth's bat faster."

Obama's trip to the museum was the first by a sitting president, though Presidents George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton had visited before or after their terms. President Martin Van Buren, a former New York governor, visited the village of Cooperstown in 1839, 100 years before the museum opened its doors.

Obama was guided on a brief tour of the museum by Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson and Andre Dawson, a 2010 inductee who played for the Montreal Expos and the Chicago Cubs.

The president examined a number of artifacts from the museum's archives, including shoes worn by "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, a ball thrown by President William Howard Taft, and a bat signed by Babe Ruth. The bat was originally signed by Ruth to President Warren Harding, but was re-signed to former New York Gov. Al Smith after Harding died before Ruth could give it to him.

Before leaving the Baseball Hall of Fame, Obama signed the guestbook: "Barack Obama; 1600 Penn Ave., Washington, D.C.; Go Sox!"

Obama, a Chicago White Sox fan, donated a White Sox jacket he wore to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the 2009 Major League Baseball All-Star Game in St. Louis, said Idelson.

The president's trip to Otsego County, N.Y., is his latest in a series of visits to upstate New York, which included a two-day swing last August that took him to the Buffalo, Binghamton and Syracuse areas, as well as a stop for lunch in Rochester. He has visited the Albany area three times since taking office in 2009, and gave a speech last week in the shadow of the Tappan Zee Bridge in Tarrytown, N.Y.

The president said baseball "describes our history in so many ways" and is symbolic of "all the obstacles that we've overcome."

"This Hall has memories of two world wars that we fought and won," Obama said. "It has memories of color barriers being broken; Jackie Robinson's uniform, the record of his first season as a Dodger. It shows us the history of communities that we built across a new continent and the ways that we connected with our country and our world, and how women athletes started getting the recognition that they deserved."

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum draws about 300,000 visitors annually, and drives about $160 million each year into the Otsego County economy, according to the museum.

Few of those visitors are from other countries, Idelson told reporters. But Major League Baseball has seen a higher rate of international players in recent years, and as some of them enter the Hall of Fame, the museum hopes to attract more tourists from foreign countries, Idelson said.

Jane Forbes Clark, the chairwoman of the Baseball Hall of Fame's board of directors, said the museum had invited sitting presidents to visit in the past. This time, the White House asked to visit, she said.

"I think what happened was, we were always going to the White House," she said. "We were taking the Hall of Fame and Cooperstown to the White House. And now, the White House has come to Cooperstown and the Hall of Fame."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made upstate tourism a top priority, hoping to entice the 54 million visitors each year to New York City to travel the rest of the state. He made it to Cooperstown as Obama was finishing his speech.

Cuomo's trip to Cooperstown was delayed by severe weather, as an apparent tornado touched down Thursday in Schenectady County, about 45 miles from the museum. Cuomo was on Long Island on Thursday morning to formally accept the Democratic nomination for governor.

"We're so grateful that (Obama) picked Cooperstown to come and make this announcement," Cuomo told reporters. "On a very practical level, it's great publicity for Cooperstown, for the state of New York. So that was very exciting."

Obama's visit drew hundreds of curious onlookers, tourists and protesters to the village, with the most visible presence from at least 100 opponents of hydraulic fracturing stationed just across the street from the museum.

For supporters and critics of fracking for natural gas, the location of Obama's speech was symbolic.

The town of Middlefield — which includes the village of Cooperstown — is locked in a courtroom battle over whether towns have the right to ban shale-gas drilling. The case will be argued in front of the New York's top court at the beginning of June.

Obama is a supporter of high-volume fracking, while Cuomo's administration hasn't yet decided whether to allow it within the state. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, meanwhile, came out against fracking in 2011.