20 Years Later

I went to Cooperstown with my dad and my brothers in 1993.  I don't remember much of it.  I remember that the plaques of the Hall of Famers were in a temporary location because they were doing renovations or something.  I remember the town having shops with lots of baseball stuff.  And I remember going to Doubleday Field.  But it had been a long time and Cooperstown isn't that far away, so I wanted to get there again.  My dad and I took the trip this past Saturday.

We parked and took a trolley to the Hall of Fame.  Before going in, we got lunch at the Doubleday Cafe.  There was a lot of baseball stuff on the walls.  I had a chicken sandwich and an Old Slugger Ale (brewed by the Cooperstown Brewing Company).  I had to have the local beer.  It was fine, but nothing special.

Then we went to the Hall of Fame.  The building looked much smaller than I expected on the outside.  But it definitely did not disappoint on the inside.  You start by going to the third floor where they show you a 13 minute video in this theater that is designed to look like a baseball stadium (really well done).  From there, you work you way from the top of the museum down to the bottom.

It looks small on the outside, but it's awesome on the inside.

There was so much at the Hall of Fame and it was all great.  I can't describe it all, but I'll get to my favorite things.  There was a great exhibit on Babe Ruth.  There were lots of great pictures of Ruth and other stuff like his bat from the called shot in the 1932 World Series and his contract with the Red Sox.  They also had his locker from the original Yankee Stadium.  (Speaking of Yankee Stadium lockers, they also had DiMaggio's locker and Mantle's locker.  Mantle's locker was exactly the same as Ruth's, no upgrades at Yankee Stadium from Ruth to Mantle.)  

Babe Ruth's locker

They had lots of great pictures of Babe Ruth, but they didn't have my favorite one, Babe Ruth in a Notre Dame jersey.

The Hall of Fame does a great job just telling the history of baseball.  They have displays on all the great teams and players over the years.  There's stuff on Stan Musial, the Brooklyn Dodgers, Ted Williams, etc. from the old days and then there's stuff on the Reds and A's in the 1970s and Mike Schmidt and George Brett (and his pine tar bat) in the 1980s.  Speaking of Ted Williams, one of my favorite things was the Ted Williams strike zone.  The Ted Williams strike zone was created by Williams and had balls that were different colors showing what he believed his batting average was by pitch location.  Belt high and down the middle was .400 (perhaps an underestimate) and out of the strike zone down and away was .230.

The Ted Williams strike zone

Of course, I took an interest in the Dodgers stuff.  One exhibit had lots of stuff about old stadiums.  I liked the Ebbets Field display of course.  If I could go back in time, I'd definitely see a game at Ebbets Field.  It's kind of hard for me to imagine what that was like because almost all the video and pictures that I've seen are in black and white and not the best quality, but they had a nice big color picture of Ebbets field that I liked.  The display mentioned that the official scorer's decision on hits and errors was showed to the crowd by lighting up either the H or the E in the Schaefer beer advertisement in right field.  My dad remembered that.  They also had a cornerstone from Ebbets Field.  There was a display on Jackie Robinson and the integration of Major League Baseball.  They also had Sandy Koufax's glove and one of his Cy Young Awards.

It's not often that I've seen a see a picture of Ebbets Field like this.  The yellow home plate is from one of the bullpens.

As I teach my students, Jackie Robinson wasn't the best baseball player ever, but he was the most important baseball player ever.

One of Koufax's Cy Youngs.

The Sandy Koufax Cy Young was in an exhibit on baseball records.  The picture above shows Koufax's record of 382 strikeouts in a season, which Nolan Ryan beat by one in 1973.  Within that exhibit was a big display on Hank Aaron, the true all time home run king.  It was also cool to see what some of the records were before they were broken.  I already knew this, but one of my favorite facts about Babe Ruth is that the all time home run record before he broke it was 138 by Roger Connor.  So Babe Ruth set the record when he hit his 139th home run.  He was a long way from being done.

The uniform Hank Aaron was wearing when he became baseball's home run king, which he still is today.

There was a great World Series exhibit with lots of artifacts and pictures from the World Series.  They have pictures of Yogi Berra jumping into Don Larson's arms after the perfect game, the Willie Mays catch, and the Sandy Amoros catch.  They have the ball that Orel Hershiser struck out Tony Phillips with to end the 1988 World Series and Mariano Rivera's hat from the 2009 World Series and lots of other stuff.  They also have all the World Series rings.

World Series rings and buttons and stuff

We saw a couple of other things before seeing the best part, the plaque gallery.  When you walk into the plaque gallery, right away you see the Class of 1936, the first class.  The inductees go around the room in chronological order, except the first class is in the back right in the middle.  That class is an awesome first class.  It's kind of nice that the Baseball Hall of Fame didn't exist in 1915 so that the first class could be five of the greatest players of all time:  Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, and Ty Cobb.  (By the way, Ty Cobb go the most votes with 222, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner both had 215.  Who were the morons who didn't vote for Babe Ruth?)  There are statues that are carved out of wood of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams.  They are both really cool and Ted Williams is one of my favorite players and one of the five greatest hitters of all time, but I wish it was a Walter Johnson statue instead.  It would be nice to have the greatest hitter of all time and the greatest pitcher of all time (I'll settle for Sandy Koufax, that would be really cool actually).  I read a lot of the plaques there, especially the Dodgers in the Hall of Fame.  One thing I noticed was that Jackie Robinson's plaque was not the original.  Jackie Robinson was inducted in 1962.  His plaque said copyright 2008 at the bottom.  It also had a lot more writing on it than all the other players from the early 1960s, so I suppose they added some stuff to his.  One thing that I really liked about Jackie Robinson and several other players was that if they served in the military, there was a little medallion below their plaque indicating what war and branch of the military they served in.  Morgan Bulkeley was the only one who served in the Civil War.  I didn't know who that was, but he was the first National League president and he served in the United States Army in the Civil War.

Five of the greatest players of all time

The greatest player of all time.

Sorry Ted, I want to replace you with Walter Johnson.

The most important player of all time.

I definitely thought of players who don't belong in the Hall of Fame.  Bert Blyleven doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame.  I'm sorry, he just doesn't.  If we're playing the old Mike and the Mad Dog game where you go through his seasons and pick which ones were Hall of Fame years, I'm giving him three (1973, 1984, and 1989).  To be sure, he had some other really good seasons and he had a very good career, but the Hall of Fame should be for the all time greats, and he's not one of them.  I also thought about how steroids have hurt the game.  I've mentioned how if Fred McGriff was clean and he wasn't being compared to guys who were cheating, you'd think of him as a Hall of Famer.  He hit the same number of home runs as Lou Gehrig, but he doesn't stand out because he played at the same time as Barroid, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire.  Between people like Bert Blyleven getting in and steroids, the Hall of Fame has not had the most impressive players inducted in the last 10 years (sort it by year to see it easily).  There have been a lot of Negro League players inducted recently and that's good.  But of players that the average baseball fan knows, I'm going to say that only Wade Boggs, Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn, and Rickey Henderson stand out as no doubt Hall of Famers (I think Cal Ripken is overrated, but 3,184 hits and 431 home runs for a guy who played shortstop for most of his career is a no doubt Hall of Famer).

After that, we went to Doubleday Field and saw the end of a game there.  Too bad the team that my friends Chris and David played on wasn't there, because they definitely would have beaten both teams I saw playing.  After Doubleday Field, we went to mass (4:30 mass on Saturday for Sunday) at St. Mary's, which was just a couple blocks away.

Me at Doubleday Field

I thought we had seen everything at the Hall of Fame, but I wanted to go back just to make sure.  Before we got there, I realized, we didn't see Vin Scully.  After doing some research on my phone, I found out that broadcasters are not officially Hall of Famers.  Winners of the Ford C. Frick Award are put on a plaque in the library in the Hall of Fame and make a speech at the induction ceremony, but they are not officially Hall of Famers.  But I had to see the Ford C. Frick Award plaque.  Right in that area was a cool exhibit on baseball in the movies.  And I looked out the window and saw two statues on the side of the building.  One was a pitcher and the other was a catcher.  I was able to read one of the plaques and find out that they were Johnny Podres and Roy Campanella.  I got really excited.  That was the last thing we saw before taking the trolley back to the parking lot.

Vin Scully won the Ford C. Frick Award in 1982.

Johnny Podres pitches to Roy Campanella, just like Game 7 of the 1955 World Series.

I'm really glad I got back to Cooperstown 20 years later.  I had high expectations and the Hall of Fame exceeded those expectations.  I mentioned the lack of great Hall of Famers in recent years.  Next year Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Frank Thomas are all eligible for the first time.  I have no doubt Maddux and Glavine will get in.  As long as Frank Thomas is clean, he's another no doubt Hall of Famer.  Greg Maddux is the best starting pitcher I've ever seen.  I'd probably take Pedro Martinez or Randy Johnson at their best, but Maddux had a better career than any starter I've ever seen.  In the years to come, Martinez, Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., Mariano Rivera (0.70 ERA in 141 innings in the postseason, that's ridiculous), and Derek Jeter will all get in the Hall of Fame.  There's no doubt about any of those guys.  Hopefully it won't take another 20 years for me to get back to the Hall of Fame and see those guys.