Baseball fans and non-fans alike may enjoy shortbread cookies and chocolates from the Cooperstown Cookie Co. in Cooperstown, N.Y., home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

The cookies -- whether they're the bite-sized "bunts" or the regulation baseball-sized cookies that crack open right along the stitching -- come in four flavors: Classic Shortbread, Mudville Mudball Chocolate Chip, All-Star Almond and Boys of Summer Lemon.

"For no apparent reason, one day I asked my husband, Kevin [a fourth-generation Cooperstownian], if he had ever known of anyone making baseball cookies here, the home of baseball," says Pati Grady, founder and president of the Cooperstown Cookie Co. "As far as he knew, no one had."

So, she decided to try an experiment with her family's tried-and-true Scottish shortbread recipe.

"I figured shortbread would be a natural to try to shape into a baseball," she says. "I took out a glass, cut out a round shape, then took a pastry crimper and made two inverted c's to resemble stitching."

When her husband measured the experimental cookie, he discovered it coincidentally was the diameter of a regulation baseball. The bunts, which are more the diameter of a shot glass, were developed when she created a bite-sized version of the cookie for sampling. They're now a part of the product line.

Her baseball-shaped shortbread cookies debuted at the National Baseball Hall of Fame's World Series Gala in October 2004.

The cookies are made with "lots and lots of butter," flour, sugar, salt and either real vanilla extract, Hershey's Mini Chips, real almond extract or lemon oil.

A small tin of regulation baseball-size cookies runs $12, a large tin $19. A tin of bunts is $19 and a tube o' bunts, $9. Each tin includes a baseball trivia question. There also are a variety of cookie gift sets, including "The Double Header," which costs about $40 and includes one large tin o' bunts and one small tin of regulation shortbread cookies that come gift-wrapped with a Cooperstown Cookie Co. gift card.

For chocolate lovers, there are the Classic Chocolate Baseball Caps -- handmade peanut-butter or caramel pecan chocolates that cost $6 and are available only in cooler weather months.

For more information about the Cooperstown Cookie Co.'s cookies, chocolates and other baseball-themed gifts, call 1-607-435-5789 or visit www.cooperstowncookiecompany.com.