ARE YOU READY FOR SOME BASEBALL?

September 26, 2007 by PT Rothschild.

(My friend Kurt takes a sports road trip back east almost every year. This is his sports report, continued from the last stop- Ed.)

SATURDAY – JULY 28^th


We drove to Cooperstown, NY for our National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum visit (about 4 hours, 238 miles). It was Induction Ceremony weekend for the 2007 Hall of Fame Class. It was a zoo; over 70,000 people were expected to invade this small town over the weekend. The town was not organized and ready for such an influx, not even close. In most other years the crowds were not as large, but this year was different because two very popular players were being inducted on Sunday – Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken, Jr. There were fans wearing Orioles jerseys all over the place. We saw Cal Ripken, who was encircled by 8-10 layers of fans, and Ozzie Smith (signing autographs). We saw crazed fans lining the outskirts of a Cooperstown golf course; they were waiting to see glimpses of baseball HOFamers playing golf the day before the ceremony. Whatever. There were many HOF’ers signing autographs inside of buildings, including Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt, Harmon Killebrew, etc., who we didn’t see. Although not that famous, I saw “The” Babe Ruth look-a-like, decked out in Yankee pinstripes wearing jersey #3 with round face and round belly and round, rosy nose, and the straight-legged walk that the Babe had. He was just exiting the downtown VFW tavern. Sorry, but that could have been the highlight.

The line to get into the HOF museum was long, and was moving slow because only a limited number of people could be inside the building (fire code), and we found out the museum was going to close early for pre-induction rituals at the Hall. So we gave up hope (we had toured the museum in prior years). Well, at least we could go into the gift shop of the museum and get some “parting” gifts, we thought. No such luck there, either – 2 hour wait (and we didn’t – wait, that is). We walked around town and shopped at several retail stores sporting baseball memorabilia, souvenirs, and garb. The 2PM New York-Penn League baseball game at Doubleday Field was free, and that must have been incentive for visitors to fill the stadium by noon or so. We didn’t go to that, either. It rained. The Red Carpet arrivals of HOF players at about 7:30PM was just too far into the evening to risk being disappointed one more time, so we left the little berg of Cooperstown with a nasty taste in our mouths and drove to Albany, NY (about 1.5 hours, 85 miles) for overnight stop-over on way to Boston.

SUNDAY – JULY 29^th

We drove to SPRINGFIELD, MA (about 1.5 hours; 93 miles). Arrived a bit early, and waited for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame to open (10AM-5PM). The museum included a display of all players inducted, information on the origin of the game (here), and many film clips and displays covering all levels of basketball – high school, college, WNBA, and NBA. One display featured Iowa girls’ basketball and had pictures of (for you true Iowa roundball fans) Lynne Lorenzen of Ventura, and for you baby boomers and young senior citizens – Denise Long and her nemesis Jeanette Olson from Everly. Also quite favorably presented were the Harlem Globetrotters (a great theater movie) and of course all of the Boston Celtics’ heroes and heroics including Bob Cousy (film clips) and so many others and their Celtic records and all of that (we’re in
Massachusetts, so we’ll go with the flow). It wasn’t really that biased. There was a basketball court in the museum, and a 3-on-3 tourney for male youngsters was going on while we toured the exhibits, so we watched a bit of that as well. For our first time visit, we enjoyed the experience and of course stayed until closing. Then we drove to Boston (about 1.7 hours, 97 miles) and settled into our motel, Comfort Inn Boston, 900 William T. Morrissey Blvd, Dorchester, MA about 5 miles south of downtown Boston (1.5 miles to T, free shuttle from motel).


to be continued…

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