Late on Friday afternoon, Dale Petroskey, president of the Baseball Hall of Fame, issued the following letter. In it, he apologizes for revoking an invitation to Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon to participate in an event centered around the baseball movie, Bull Durham.
Here's the full text of the letter as posted on the Hall's Web site:
We have received thousands of letters, e-mails, and phone calls about the cancellation of the Bull Durham events scheduled for April 26-27. Thank you for sharing your feelings with us.
It’s good to see Petroskey at least saying the right things now, although I agree that it would be better to try to revive the event. But maybe it was attempted behind the scenes, and couldn’t be rescheduled.
“Politics has no place in the Hall of Fame.” Hmm. Does that mean that Petroskey now regrets hosting a talk by noted star of the diamond Ari Fleischer last year? Maybe at least there won’t be any more such foolishness (and yes, I would have made the same criticism had the Hall hosted a talk by Mike McCurry during the Clinton years).