SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Last weekend, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown held its annual induction ceremony and ESPN's Joe Buck joined his father Jack Buck as the only father-son duo to receive the Ford C. Frick Award, which honors a broadcaster for major contributions to baseball.During the press conference on Saturday morning for the man who has called more World Series on television than anyone, this reporter asked Buck how much his father followed Thoroughbred racing.“Oh, he loved it,” said Buck. “He took me to the track any chance he could. We went to Hollywood Park once and sat with Walter Matthau.“My Dad thought he could read every racing form and had every lock,” he said. “Of course, we all know that isn't the way it goes. You know, he had a horse once named Almighty Buck and suffice it to say it cost him almighty bucks!“He actually wanted to be a track announcer in St. Louis, but he was color blind, so there was no way he could distinguish a jockey's silks,” added Buck. “But he loved the game and I'll always remember that about him.”Ford C. Frick winner Joe Buck (far right) | JN CampbellBuck's story is a reminder that horse racing and baseball are intertwined in places we might not otherwise expect, but it is also true that the two sports share a long, parallel history.In New York, their Hall of Fame venues–which include museum exhibitions meant to document the past–are less than two hours away from one another, which makes it ideal for fans who want to experience both Saratoga Springs and Cooperstown.But it hasn't always been a level playing field between the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.On Aug. 21, 1989 in a piece published in the Los Angeles Times called “Fame and Fortunes: Horse Racing Strives to Catch Its Baseball Neighbor,” turf writer Bill Christine pointed out the Racing Musem's shortcomings and the need to raise the stakes.“This museum, to say the least, was slow getting out of the starting gate, and it wasn't until last year, when a $6-million renovation was completed, that the Hall of Fame joined the 20th Century,” Christine wrote of the Racing Museum. “Before that, the place could have been mistaken for a mausoleum.”Baseball's Hall at Cooperstown | GettyIn the 35 years since Christine's article went to press, the landscape has changed, literally. Racing has wrangled its past, put elbow grease into its structure on Union Avenue and continues to improve on the product.Cooperstown is still Cooperstown, which is meant as a compliment. Visiting the multi-level museum structure on Main Street you are inundated with decades of a material culture associated with the game.The Jackie Robinson section is particularly moving, seeing sportswriter Grantland Rice's last typewriter is inspiring and who wouldn't get a charge out of Roy Hobbs's bat 'Wonder Boy' that was used in the 1984 movie The Natural–yes, they have the 'Savoy Special' too. Ending up in the corridor laden with plaques of the greats is what makes the trip to the remote location worth every bend in the road that it takes to get there.In Saratoga Springs, racing is the heartbeat of the town, but the sport's Museum and Hall of Fame as Christine wrote all those years ago took time to develop after it was founded in 1950.“In my lifetime I can remember when the Racing Museum was only open for about a month and a half when the meet was on to now becoming a year-round destination,” said the Museum's Historian Michael Veitch. “It has come to play a larger role in the community and that has provided the opportunity for us to showcase what amounts to a deep collection.”Hall of Fame Jockey Ramon Dominguez leads tours at the Museum | Sarah AndrewThe Racing Museum's galleries offer coverage from Colonial America to the present day. A broad range of pieces are displayed including early jockey's scales, a starting gate, Seabiscuit material, facts on the Triple Crown winners and so much more. An advertisement by The Jockey Club requesting the loan of binoculars for a war effort to be sent to the U.S. Naval Observatory was a particular gem.One of the most compelling spaces houses a special exhibition of historic photographs from the collection of DRF's Barbara Livingston that runs until the end of the year.Entitled “Capturing and Preserving Greatness: A Life's Passion,” the exhibit includes images Livingston took herself and also the work of photographers who worked at a variety of tracks during the last century. The six-time Eclipse Award winner painstakingly hunted down the collections and saved them from being deposited in the trash heap of history.“We have to realize that a guy like Jim Raftery was the track photographer for Hialeah, Gulfstream, Atlantic City, Garden State Park and Monmouth Park for like 40 or 50 years,” said Livingston. “So all of those negatives were like little cocoons waiting to turn into butterflies.“Some of these photographer's names are not always known, but what matters is that the public gets to see their work and be inspired by it,” she said. “That's what happened to me when I was growing up looking at photos of horses and passing that on has been just a great mission.”Seabiscuit display | JN CampbellAs for the Racing Hall of Fame itself, that space has evolved into a multimedia room the size of a basketball court. Bob Costas narrates the film, “What It Takes: Journey to the Hall of Fame.” Afterwards, fans can use kiosks to access information on their favorite horses or people who have been inducted into the Hall.Unlike inductees to Cooperstown who are retired, jockeys and trainers add to their career accomplishments since they could be still active. Going digital has allowed the Hall of Fame to keep their databases current with what's happening in the sport.Interactive exhibits are now the standard part of the museum experiences at Cooperstown and Saratoga, as they look to educate the public.“The similarities between the two Halls are obvious– they're both situated in small, picturesque towns in upstate New York,” said legendary turf writer Steve Crist, who is the last living member of the inaugural class of media inductees back in 2010. “The biggest difference is that they don't play 40 premium MLB games every summer in Cooperstown, whereas Saratoga runs 40 days of top-level racing across the street from the Hall. Cooperstown probably has a better Hall, but Saratoga as a locale attracts way more visitors.”Horse racing and baseball are two distinctive sports, but they form a strong bond in the region. Bill Christine was correct that the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame had its work cut out chasing the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. But the gap hasn't widened, it has closed.What we can imagine is that Jack Buck would love both.*The 2026 Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame will be live streamed on their website at 10:30 a.m. ET on Friday, Aug. 7.The post Saratoga And Cooperstown: Hall Of Fame Hamlets Offer Daily Double To Past appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.