Week 12 - "visit a museum"



Bill outside the H of F where the first ceremony was held.

      After a year of planning, we finally made our trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY, last week. When we first thought about retiring in the fall of 2011, we thought we would like to go to Cooperstown, Niagara Falls and see the leaves of Upstate New York.
     I (Dad) had been to Cooperstown about 15 years ago and was anxious to return with Mom. I only got to spend about 2 hours there on my previous visit so was excited to have more time to spend. Mom has been reading James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales" so she was anxious to see Cooperstown and the area. We loved the town, the area and the Hall of Fame. The weather was cool and overcast so we didn't walk around as much as we would have liked. I mostly like the old-time stuff in the Hall of Fame -- the early 20th century up through the "60s. They had displays on the Cubs' powerhouses of 1906-1910. I also learned that Hack Wilson's Major League record of 190 RBI in a season has been amended to 191. Some historian going through box scores has discovered one additional RBI for the Cub slugger in 1929. It's a great museum for baseball fans with videos and audio of famous events. They have improved the Hall of Fame plaque area from when I was there in the mid-90s. It's very impressive.


One of several sculptures -- Roy Campanella.

      We arrived at the Hall of Fame about 10 a.m. and spent a couple hours wandering through one part of the museum. The nice thing is you can leave the building. They stamp your hand so you can leave to have lunch and then return later. So we left for lunch and went back for a couple more hours. They have tons of books for sale that have been written about baseball. The day we were there they had a couple shelves with books about the Cubs. It's a very stately building.      Cooperstown is such a quaint little town. There are no neon signs, no fast-food restaurants, no chain hotels or anything like that in the village (it's a village, not a city). The town was founded by JF Cooper's dad in 1785 and some of the buildings actually date to the 18th century. Many of the buildings are from the early 1800s. The village is on the edge of Lake Otsego, which was "Glimmerglass Lake" in Cooper's Leatherstocking books.


A portion of the entrance to the Hall of Fame.

      There aren't even any big signs saying "Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum This Way." It's just another downtown building. Doubleday Field, where they used to play a Major League Exhibition game on Hall of Fame induction weekend, is about a block away. It's also a cute little field with residences beyond the short outfield fences.
     As I mentioned, it was cool and overcast while we were in Cooperstown so the scenery wasn't very colorful. Cooperstown is between the Adirondack and Catskill mountains so it is a hilly, forested area with lots of lakes in the vicinity. We spent two nights and parts of three days there. Our hotel was a couple miles outside of town.
The beautiful old bed-and-breakfasts in town are very expensive and we wanted the comforts of a modern hotel. We did eat at two different local restaurants 

Some of the 111 Hall of Fame plaques.

each night we were there. And, although it wasn't crowded because it was early October, the restaurants and Hall of Fame had a steady stream of people.
     When we weren't actually inside the museum, we were walking up and down Main Street looking in the different souvenir and specialty shops.  We also took a short walk down a side street to Otsego Lake (Glimmerglass) and could picture the Deerslayer and the Indians in the forests surrounding the lake.  There is a magnificent Country Club with manicured grounds right on the lake and we explored that area as well as the town.
     It was the start of a great week.  After Cooperstown, we were off to Lake Ontario and Niagara Falls before driving back home.