The 12 Largest Crowds in Cooperstown for Hall of Fame Weekend

Every summer, fans from all over the world come in droves to watch baseball's greatest players get enshrined in Cooperstown.

But why Cooperstown? After all, it's a village of just 1,819 year-round residents. Not a place that immediately comes to mind to host a huge celebration.

The Baseball Hall of Fame's origin can be traced back to 1935, with the intention of celebrating the sport's supposed centennial. An Army officer named Abner Doubleday was rumored to have invented the game in Cooperstown, but that legend was later disproven. For whatever reason, whether the Doubleday tale was true or not didn't stop the Baseball Hall of Fame from being built in the small Otsego county village anyway. And so fans of the game have no choice, really, but to undertake the arduous task every year of getting to Cooperstown-- the closest international commercial airport being nearly 90 minutes away.

The small size of the village makes it all the more spectacular when such large numbers gather to see their favorite stars receive their plaque. Generally speaking, the more popular the players, the bigger the crowds. But even a "down year" has the ability to increase the number of townsfolk by ten times or more.

To date, the largest crowd for an Induction Weekend was 2007, when 82,000 people descended on Cooperstown... more than 45 times the year-round population.

Below are the 12 largest crowds to ever gather in Cooperstown for Hall of Fame weekend: