The National Baseball
Hall of Fame Museum, Sunday, July 26
We reserved
Sunday as our day to tour the Hall of Fame before attending
the Induction Ceremony for Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice.
The admission is a bit steep at $15 a piece, but this was a
once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Induction Day at the Hall of Fame
We
went directly to the Hall of Plaques. The plaques were the
thing I liked best about the entire museum. Reading over
the accomplishments of players long gone was interesting.
You could tell that the favorite players' plaques had been
touched often by the way the bronze was buffed on the
person's face. It was neat.
Inside the Hall of Plaques
***
Wade Boggs - Gary Carter - Dave Winfield
***
After I left the
Hall of Plaques, I was disappointed. To me, and I speak
only for myself, the museum seemed static. It seemed like
there were too many displays of gloves, balls, bats, and
uniforms and not enough displays of things that conveyed
the action and excitement of baseball. The one display that
was interesting was the audio of Bob Murphy (HOF 1994) announcing a 1962
Met game at the Polo Grounds in which Gil Hodges and Richie Ashburn (HOF 1995) were in the
lineup. We listened to the play-by-play while in front
of a display on baseball announcers and that was
interesting, but overall, sad to say, a bit
disappointed. We didn't stay long. I doubt if it was two
hours.
Display of Tom Seaver
***
Display of Ozzie Smith and Rickey Henderson
***
Me standing next to the plaque mounts awaiting the bronzes
for Rickey, Jim Rice, and Joe Gordon
***
Well, we leave the front door of the Hall and we notice a swarm of people across the street at the Cooperstown Post Office. It is Sunday, so we go over and check it out. Apparently, the name of the Cooperstown Post Office is called the "Induction Day Station." Every Induction Day the Post Office opens in order to apply a special Baseball Hall of Fame cancellation on anything that has a stamp. So what you do is take an item (almost anything from a ball to a bat to a photo), put a US stamp on it, and take it to the Induction Day Post Office on Induction Day and a postal employee will put a special "Baseball Hall of Fame July 26, 2009" cancellation on it.
*
I can't remember
the exact order of events but John had a set of baseballs
with him for signature and we were just walking the streets
of Cooperstown letting fate come to us. Guess what, it did.
We came upon Bob Feller signing at a table on the street.
John got a ball signed. Feller was great, very
accommodating.
John with Bob Feller (HOF 1962)
The Induction Day
Ceremony of Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice
You
won't believe what I'm about to tell you. We didn't go to
the ceremony. What we slowly came to learn while we were
whiling away the hours in Cooperstown was that people were
laying out blankets and putting down their lawn chairs at
the Clark Sports Center getting spots for the
ceremony at 7:30 AM. I was a little tired and I made a
suggestion to John. I said we should cancel the attempt
to fight 21,000 people to listen to 15 minute speeches
from each of the inductees. We had met half of the Hall
of Famers in person by then so we didn't feel we'd be
missing much sitting 500 yards from the stage. Instead
we opted to see the Legends Interview with the new Hall
of Famers on Monday.
Click here to find out
what I'm talking
about.