Info:       

Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum
25 Main Street
Cooperstown, NY 13326

Web:
www.baseball
halloffame.org

Phone:
888-HALL-OF-FAME

Cooperstown/Otsego County Tourism
242 Main Street
Oneonta, NY 13820

Web:
www.thisiscoopers
town.com

Phone:
800-843-3394

Cooperstown
Chamber of Commerce
31 Chestnut Street
Cooperstown, NY 13326

Web:
www.cooperstown
chamber.org

Phone:
607-547-9983

Cooperstown, NY—Talking Baseball                       

by Mitch Kaplan
photos by Mitch Kaplan


Time for a word association test. I say "Cooperstown, New York." You say?

"Baseball."

Of course.

Well, who can blame you? After all, Cooperstown is home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum. It’s allegedly the place where baseball was invented. It eats, sleeps and bleeds baseball.

People in team shirts, that’s the first thing you notice. People who visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum, it seems, feel the need to display their loyalty. Yankees. Cardinals. Red Sox. Brooklyn Dodgers. No matter. They wear t-shirts, game jerseys, baseball caps, even team socks.

But, you know what? It doesn’t matter who your team is. To us baseball fans, even casual ones, the Hall is about more than the game. It’s about Americana. It’s about our youth—even if you’re still a youth. It’s about Little League games, stickball games, high school teams, and those memorable major league moments you saw live at the ball park or on TV.

The Hall is forever young. No matter how many times you visit, there’s always something fresh about being here, especially the rejuvenation that comes from conjuring up those beloved memories.

Or from creating them—during one of our more memorable family outings my dad, my brother and my then nine year-old, Dan, created our own historic baseball moment by staging a major wiffle ball game on the Hall’s back lawn.

The nostalgic magic starts with the pair of wax-museum statues in the main lobby. Ted Williams and Babe Ruth. It doesn’t stop til well after you’ve left town.

Touring the Hall              

Where to begin? I like the short introductory film at the Grandstand Theater, a beautifully made depiction of baseball’s role in American life.

I’m also partial to

• the old stadia exhibit (well, I did spend much of my youth watching the Giants and, later the Mets, at the long-ago demolished Polo Grounds in Manhattan)
• the World Series Room takes you back to mystical moments—even if those were only one  year ago
• and the exhibits on African-Americans in baseball and women in baseball illustrate the game’s social/historical reach.

But, I suggest to a first-time visitor—just let your interests take you where they will. Like the re-created locker room with a locker for each team. Everyone automatically migrates to their favorite.

On my most recent visit, somewhere between major exhibits, I stumbled across a small crowd gathered around a TV set. Kids sat on a park bench or on the floor. Adults stood in a semi-circle. A series of in-game blooper videos had caught their attention. But, then Abbott & Costello appeared doing the classic "Who's On First?".

What would these kids think? They were clearly too young to know Abbott & Costello and about Vaudeville. They probably had never seen "Who’s on First?".

No worries.

They were enthralled. They laughed and quoted from the script as they left. If baseball holds universal appeal, this—maybe the best baseball comedy skit ever—certainly illustrates it.

And, of course, there’s the Hall of Fame itself, where grandpa just might want to spend an entire afternoon reading plaques. Myself, I have never left the building without paying homage to my two main men—Willie Mays and Gaylord Perry. 

• Mays because he was the heart of my beloved Giants
• Perry because he survived in the big leagues not through innate talent, but by guile, guts, brains and, yes, even by cheating.

I was at Shea Stadium the night Perry managed to save his job by pitching ten scoreless extra innings  to finish a 22-inning affair )purportedly the first time he threw the spitter in a major league game). . . But, that’s a whole ‘nother story.

When you’re done, walk three blocks over to Doubleday Field, where the Induction Ceremony Game is played annually. It’s what a baseball park should be. And, if all this baseball has inspired you, stop in next door to the ball park and hit some batting practice at the Doubleday Batting Range.

Hall of Fame admission is good all day. That’s good, because it’s not unusual for folks to find themselves wandering back to the Hall after lunch and, then again, after dinner.