“RV’ING … WHERE ONE SPENDS A FORTUNE TO LIVE LIKE A HOMELESS PERSON.”
On Sunday, August 3, we made our way to Webster, NH, strategically located in that Bermuda Triangle between my Uncle Judd and Aunt Theo Alexander (Exeter, NH), my cousin Morah Alexander (Reading, MA), and my other cousin Todd Alexander and his wife Amy and son Judd (Hartland, VT). We were supposed to see all of them, but due to life happening and other such stuff, we only had time with Judd and Theo (and a glance of Morah one evening.)
Aunt Theo is just about the nicest woman on Earth. I had such a crush on her when I was six and met her at their engagement party. I don’t know how Uncle Judd lucked out.
Speaking of which, my uncle is quite the guy. In 1944, he and my father had the incredible good fortune of actually finding each for a few hours meet-up in Europe among hundreds of thousands of GI’s in that quagmire called World War II. Judd went to the same college where I matriculated, graduating from Carleton in 1949 along with my mom a year after my dad graduated from there. Judd had a stellar career with American Can Corporation and became a well-respected speaker on the subject of recycling in its early days. He’s even a published author, writing the well known tome “In Defense of Garbage.” This guy, like me, knows a whole lot of stuff about absolutely everything unimportant. He’s so tough in a game of “Trivial Pursuits.”
We followed that up with a trip to the Strawberry Banke Museum, a restored town complete with 32 historic homes from the neighborhood area restored on their original sites and four other Portsmouth area houses rescued from planned demolitions. It was a lot of fun to have all that history condensed down into two square blocks. (This old time store proves that M&M's and bread are "for your health"! Take that Ms. Diedre!)The next day I wanted to just sit in the dark and psyche myself up for the ultimate part of MY trip, COOPERSTOWN, NY, and THE NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME!!
Fortunately, my bride knew I had to get out and do something, at least to keep my walking streak going, so from our campground, we made the short jaunt out to the Yankee Farmer’s Market in Warner, NH. It was a veritable “rural zoo” with pigs, chickens, Highland cattle, and buffalo. I noticed while at the pig-sty that someone had thrown three carrots in with to a large sow and lots of little piglets. They were all snuffling around in the mud, probably looking for truffles. But as I watched, I was amazed that … EVEN THEY wouldn’t eat the carrots! Just as I’ve always suspected … NO ONE, not even pigs, likes carrots … well, except for maybe Bugs Bunny.
 |
| Charlie attempting to distract Alexx from obsession. |
OK, here’s the disclaimer for the rest of this week’s blog: if you’re not into baseball, you might want to sign off and catch us next week after our visit to State College, PA. I mean, there’s going to be A LOT of baseball stuff.
No? You’re staying and will plod your way through the blog?
All right then, but you’ve been warned.
Cooperstown was founded in 1786 by William Cooper, land speculator, judge, congressman, and father to that great American writer, James Fenimore Cooper. William hired a first-rate lawyer to help him buy the first 40,000 acres in the area. That lawyer was Alexander Hamilton. Ironically, one of the lawyers for the seller was Aaron Burr who would go on later in life to kill Hamilton in a duel of honor. They should have settled it on the ball field with a rousing game of “Chicken Base.”
Another notable resident of Cooperstown was General Abner Doubleday whose grave I futilely searched for a few weeks back at Arlington National Cemetery. In 1908, the National Baseball Commission decided that the old General was the founder of the game of baseball back in 1839. And if a 106-year old, non-scientific group of old guys decided that Abner invented baseball, that’s good enough for me.So Wednesday, August 6, was my first time back in Cooperstown since August of 1963 when I visited the Hall with my mom and brother when I was 12. That was a 51-year absence, far too long for someone like me. When Diedre and I got there, I immediately noticed a lot had changed.
You think?!
We gleefully (mostly me) walked the town and photographed Doubleday Baseball Field, the site of baseball’s alleged invention 175 years ago. 
We took pictures that duplicated photos my mom took of my brother and me more than a half-century ago: one in the bleachers at the ballpark as well as another in front of the old (it was old, even in 1963) hotel where we had stayed back then.
At a nearby shop was the home plate from the Polo Grounds from the last game played there by the New York Giants in 1957. The Polo Grounds has always been my favorite stadium; unfortunately, the closest I ever got to it was from a boat while riding around Manhattan Island back in ’63. It’s always been a regret of mine that I didn’t get to a game back then.I was saving going to the Hall of Fame for tomorrow when I could devote an entire day to it. But here’s a trick we learned that’ll help all you future visitors to the NBHOF: buy your ticket after 7 PM the night before you want to go. That gets you in right at 9 AM the next morning ahead of the inevitably long line of customers waiting to buy their tickets. And being in the U.S. Army Reserves for six years finally paid off for me with a nice discounted entrance fee, so you could always try that.
On June 12, 1939, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum first opened its doors to thousands of fans and its inaugural class of inductees. It is the largest repository of baseball information in the world. Its collection includes:-38,000 bats, balls, and uniforms;
-130,000 baseball cards;
-two-million research files;
-a half-million photographs;
-12,000 hours of recorded media;
-plaques of the top 1% of major league players, managers, executives, and umpires;
-and in their archive library, they’ve got … wait for it … THREE-MILLION ITEMS! Boy, that’s going to take me more than a week to go through all those.
I began my baseball assault on Thursday, August 7, by seeing all of level two and part of level three. The Hall has three floors, but they suggest you start on the 2nd floor, then do the third before finishing up on the first floor and its Hall of Plaques.
The highlights of Thursday included:-George Brett’s infamous pine-tar bat;
-Geena Davis’s uniform from that great baseball movie “A League of Their Own” (and from which I
got my signature e-mail tag line: “There’s No Crying in Baseball”;
-the original manuscript of Jack Norwith’s 1908 poem/song, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” (and it’s
“I don’t care if I NEVER get back,” not “EVER,” just in case you were wondering);
-Dizzy Dean’s 1934 St. Louis Cardinals jersey (Dean won 30 games that year and two games in the
World Series);
-a listing of the original 1936 voting for the first class to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Five players were voted in; amazingly, the unpopular Ty Cobb got the most votes, even more than America’s hero, Babe Ruth;
-a 1929 World Series program, the exact copy of which I have at home (my grandfather, Mark Alexander, attended the Series that year as well as the 1932 World Series with Babe Ruth’s “called shot” home run);
-in the Mariano Rivera exhibit, they had a bat broken by the pitcher’s tight slider, which happened often when he was on the mound. The bat was the property of Brett Lawrie, the brother of our actor friend Skip Maxwell who you dedicated blog-fans will no doubt recall we met up with in New York City three weeks back.
Tired but still exhilarated, I broke for lunch about 2 PM and made my way to the Cooperstown Diner. I tell you, they’re really after the money there. I ordered a cheeseburger. Well, this was absolutely the first time I ever, and I repeat EVER, was charged for lettuce and tomato!
Really?! Has that ever happened to you? I think not.
And of course, there were NO free refills on the Diet-Coke I so love. They did condescend to give me a free pickle, WHICH I NEVER EAT ANYWAY! At least the bun was free.
Interesting place.
From there, I made my way back to Doubleday Field to watch a bit of a baseball. The guys there playing were part of “The Legends of Baseball All-Star Camp.” Apparently, it’s for “men of good cheer” over the age of 30, although the average age was 45. They were playing a round-robin baseball tournament on the field where it all started.
There were some adjusted rules from the regular game of baseball to accommodate these 30-year old old-timers (my senior softball teammates, all 60+, will get a good laugh out of that):
-no stealing or advancing on a passed ball or a wild pitch;
-teams are limited to scoring six runs per inning;
-the batting order from the first game stays the same for the entire tournament; each new game starts with the on-deck batter from the end of the previous game leading off. Talk about your equality;
-no pinch (courtesy) runners from home plate to first unless the batter is 70+;
-if a batter can not run for himself, he automatically gets first if he cleanly gets a hit that goes through the infield. Then he can be run for by the last hitter to make an out;
-lead-offs from a base can be no more than eight feet;
-no player under the age of 30 is allowed to pitch (younger players can play ONLY if they are related to one of the “older” players);
-if a pitcher hits two batters in one inning, he must come off the mound for the rest of that inning. Hitting three batters in a game disqualifies him from pitching the rest of the game;
-Outfielders may not throw out the batter at first on clean hits through the infield;
-there’s a 10-run mercy rule, but only if the losing team wants to end the game;
-players must be in full uniforms; no tee-shirts or shorts.
It was a lot of fun to watch, although the game was cut short by rain. That got me headed back to the Hall and part two of today’s baseball marathon.
Once back, I finished touring the rest of the second level, then made my way to the third. I was able to see about half of that before they finally threw me out. While I was immersing myself in all things baseball, Diedre was making good use of her time away from me by traversing “The Cooperstown Beverage Trail.” In the 19th century, 80% of all hops grown in America came from Cooperstown’s Otsego County. That’s beer-talk, something right up Diedre’s alley. She really enjoyed her time at the famous Belgian draft house, The Ommegang Brewery, as well as at the Fly Creek Cider Mill, a few wineries and the Cooperstown Distillery.
Using the night-before-ticket-purchase-
Ahhhh … it was great!
On this day, I especially enjoyed seeing:
-an incredible photo of Hall of Famer Albert Spalding’s world-touring baseball team sitting on the Sphinx in Egypt. The date was February 9, 1889. (I’ve just got to get a copy of that picture);-and touching the actual cornerstone of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ now long gone Ebbets Field. It was laid in 1912;
-the bat Carlton Fisk used to hit his famous “wave it fair foul-pole home run” in game 6 of the 1976 World Series;
-the bat Luis Gonzalez used for his 2001 World Series game-seven winning hit against the Yankees; at that moment, we had been outside the D’backs’ stadium watching the game at a neighboring bar just to be close to the action;
-the glove Willie Mays used in the 1954 World Series against the Cleveland Indians to make perhapsthe most famous catch in baseball history;
-the ball Babe Ruth hit for his 60th home run in 1927 and that must have been given to the Hall by Joe
Forner (see Philadelphia blog for the back story on Joe, Strauss, and me);
-the ball Barry Bonds hit to break Hank Aaron’s record for lifetime home runs. Now normally, I’ve
got no time for Barry Bonds. I consider him a blatant cheater and just an all-around bad guy. But
I did enjoy seeing this ball. The fellow who donated it to the Hall put a giant asterisk on it so that
all people for all time would know how Barry cheated with steroids to break Hank’s still standing record (at least as far as I‘'m concerned).
At lunchtime, I did a little town walking off the main drag. Totally unplanned, I stumbled across the grave of that great American novelist, James Fenimore Cooper. It was just two blocks from the Hall.
As I got back to Main Street on my way back to the Hall, I noticed a T-shirt in a store’s window that really highlighted the rivalry between the Yankees and the Red Sox. It said: “I GUESS THERE WAS NO CURSE AFTER ALL (BOSTON JUST “SUCKED” FOR 86 YEARS!)” And next to it was one for those who don’t appreciate an umpire’s call: “HEY UMP, LENSCRAFTERS CALLED! THEY’LL BE READY IN ABOUT AN HOUR!”
Now poised to take on the first floor at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, I took the time to try to read the plaque of every one of the 300+ members of the Hall. I expended some extra “special” time at the plaques of my two favorites, Hank Aaron and Ted Williams. Other incredible objects I saw on the ground level included:-a wonderful oil painting of Babe Ruth pointing for his “called shot” home run in the 1932 World Series
against the Chicago Cubs;
-the “Wonderboy” bat used by Robert Redford in the great movie, “The Natural”;
-the baseball jersey Gwen Verdon wore in the musical movie, “Damn Yankees”;
-and the original draft of the song “Centerfield” written by John Fogerty.A 1970 quote by Yankee pitcher and renowned author Jim Bouton was broadly written near the door to the exit. It pretty much summed up my lifelong love affair with baseball: “You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end, it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”
So true.
Diedre and I got reacquainted with each other that night at a lakeside dinner at the Hawkeye Bar and Grill at the beautiful 1909 Otesaga Resort Hotel on the banks of Lake Otsego. “Cooper,” the town’s version of the Loch Ness Monster, showed up while we were eating. It was quite a surprise as we didn’t think he actually existed … Gee, maybe the 15 hours on my feet over the last two days at the Hall was finally getting to me.
During Diedre’s and my courtship, we’ve been on a lot of vacations and seen a lot of places to which my wife has impulsively decided we needed to move: Scotland, Hawaii, and Vancouver Island come to mind. But I never thought she’d consider Cooperstown in that category. But for reasons far different than mine, she was smitten by the little town in upstate New York. She thought it was utterly charming. So while on our walk back to the car that night after dinner, we passed a big old house that reminded me of the one lived in by the Addams Family. It was at 47 Nelson Street and just happened to be for sale. I made the mistake of mentioning it to DK.It was at that moment that Diedre had her vision:
“we would buy the Addams Family house and turn it into a baseball-themed
bed-and-breakfast.”
Now usually, I’m the one that has to bring the two of us back to Earth when these visions happen. But this was different; I could see it, too.
Not good.
DK immediately got on the phone and called Pauli, our realtor friend in California, and asked her to give us the lowdown on the place. And for the rest of our time in Cooperstown and probably the week afterwards, the two of us kept coming up with scenarios regarding our new venture. You’ll have to stay tuned to see if the excitement ebbs, or we stay with it and move to New York.
On our last day in Cooperstown, I simply walked Main Street checking out the shops of downtown Cooperstown. I don’t want to say this town is baseball crazy, but of the 52 shops on the three-block long downtown circuit, a full 23 of them are dedicated to the sale of all things baseball. There’s a “Yastrzemski’s Sports,” a “Mickey’s (Mantle) Sports,” and a “Shoeless Joe Jackson’s Sports.” Now, that’s my kind of town.
At Shoeless Joe’s, we picked up a great pair of matching T-shirts which we’ll for sure wear to the next ball game we attend. See if you get it by these descriptions:
1) they both say Cooperstown on the front;
2) on the back, mine has the number 1 and over it the name reads “WHO”;
3) similarly, Diedre’s has the number 2 and the name “WHAT.”
Now if you say, “I DON’T KNOW,” you‘re on the right track.
I know this blog was kind of long with a single theme. Don’t worry. I’ll make up for that when we get to Cincinnati … I mean it.
--------------
 |
| Best fish taco ever at Alex & Ika |
The library is across the street from the HOF and although the technology needs attention, the staff is very friendly and the selection of books is vast. The senior living center in town is very active in providing speakers on a weekly basis. I just happened to luck out and hear the owner of Cooperstown Distillery talk about his the superior distilling process he uses for the gin and whiskey. The next day I visited the distillery and sampled their selections. The gin bouquet is enhanced by New York's own lavender and the vodka clearly rivals Grey Goose. I've always been a scotch drinker, but their whiskey was smoother than any I've tasted. Needless to say, I had to purchase one of each, and since enjoying them I can't imagine that when I finish the bottles it will be the last I will taste of it. So if we don't move to Cooperstown, I'll have to at least make sure we get back to restock my cabinet. Can't imagine I'll get much argument from Alexx. And if we end up moving there, I've already decided that tastings of the local beverages will be a part of the evening entertainment at the B&B - that and of course baseball stories on the veranda told by my favorite baseball historian.
No comments:
Post a Comment