Day 2 - National Baseball Hall Of Fame

It’s every baseball fan’s dream to visit the Shrine Of The Diamond, the Holy Cathedral Of The Game or as it’s better known, Cooperstown. Today I got to scratch one more thing off of a very long bucket list and we did drive through some more beautiful countryside to reach our destination. In fact, at one point, Carl mentioned how curious it was the Hall Of Fame was in the middle of no where. That was until we made the very last left hand turn onto Main Street. Then his comment was how could the Hall be in the middle of town. I could fill pages with statistics and the mentioning of all the memorabilia we saw but that couldn’t do justice to the overall experience. I do want to mention a couple of things the Hall Of Fame website does not mention. There is not a great deal of parking, especially when there is a game scheduled at Doubleday field. We didn’t know this and were at a loss as to where we could park our truck and trailer which measures 44 feet in length together. We pulled up to the firestation, talked with a couple of local folks who were quite helpful. One suggested a parking lot out behind a Credit Union with lots of room. Come to find out, it was a trolley stop. We still walked down town, about a half a mile, to the museum. The second thing I want to let people know is the Hall Of Fame offers free admission to veterans. We didn’t find this out until Carl offered our AAA card and his military ID, asking which would get him a better discount. The cashier smiled, asked if he was a veteran and then proceeded to take the AAA card to give me a 20% discount while Carl was admitted at no charge. We spent three wonderful hours taking a tour through the history of the game which to my surprise also included a pretty good display honoring the All American Girls Professional League, replacement ball played during the war and for a few years after. I also got to pay homage to the greats of the games, names like Cobb, DiMaggio, Ruth and Williams, along with favorites I watched play for years like Jim Palmer, Dennis Eckersly, Carl Yazstremski, Wade Boggs, and Jim Rice. Even artifacts from Pete Rose are there, being honored for his contributions to the game, his prowess with a bat and his record for lifetime hits. BTW, I do not agree with the commissioner’s edict to keep him out of the Hall. The photo is of THE baseball that ended the "curse" and an 86 year long dry spell in 2004.