Cooperstown
For the one off-day of our three-week journey, Dad and I drive to Cooperstown, New York, to pay homage to baseball at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Afterward, we stop at nearby Doubleday Field for more baseball, then check out a few more sights around Cooperstown.
For the first time in two and a half weeks, our daily itinerary did not include getting to a new ballpark to see a game of baseball. And yet we were headed to our baseballiest destination yet, the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
The day could not have started better. On a gloriously pretty morning, with perfect temperatures and a bright sky, we drove north on the eastern side of the Hudson River, our small highway bathed in dappled shade as we listened to a podcast about advances in AI.
We turned west at Catskill, skirting the mountains to the south, and passed through the forests, hamlets, and farmland of Greene and Schoharie counties. The driving was immensely satisfying, with the road gently winding and rolling through valley villages, over modest hills filled with spruce and pines, and crossing modest streams that sparkled in the sun. There was an intensity, a stark relief, to the greens of the roadside grasses and the whites of the simple wooden churches along the way.
After about three hours, the route took us directly down Main Street in Cooperstown.
Our first order of business was lunch. We made the easy call to eat at the Doubleday Cafe, where — yes, friends — I had the Doubleday Reuben with corned beef.
The shopkeepers of Cooperstown know their tourists. Store windows were stuffed with baseball jerseys, shirts, hats, bats, pins, cards, classic games, and other collectibles.
Baseball Hall of Fame
Those visitors were headed to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, a shrine to baseball that has become synonymous with Cooperstown. The Hall of Fame was first established in 1936, electing Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner, and Walter Johnson. The building to honor them and 20 others came three years later. By the end of 2023, the Hall had 343 members, including Major League and Negro league players, managers, executives, umpires, and others.As visitors wait to enter the museum proper, they pass statues of Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, and Roberto Clemente — a display titled “Character and Courage,” paying tribute to three groundbreaking icons of the game and the quality and resilience they displayed on and off the field.
The museum begins, of course, with the origins of baseball and faithfully tells the stories of its stars, top teams, trends, trophies, and memorabilia with a collection that includes 250,000 photographs and 40,000 artifacts, plus film, video, and sound recordings.
The ball thrown for the last pitch of Walter Johnson’s no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox in 1920.
Ty Cobb’s Detroit Tigers of 1907-1909.
Part of a room dedicated to Babe Ruth.
The Chicago American Giants (featuring Rube Foster) and the St. Louis Stars, Negro League powerhouses in the 1920s and early 1930s.
The 1952 jersey of St. Louis Browns legend Satchell Paige, with the bat Ted Williams smashed when Paige struck him out in their final dual in 1951; and the jersey of Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in 1947.
The 1950s New York Yankees, with Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, and manager Casey Stengel.
The Dodgers (Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, and manager Walter Alston) and the St, Louis Cardinals (Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Tim McCarver, and Curt Flood) of the 1960s.
Uniform styles from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
A short-lived experiment of Chicago White Sox owner and master promoter Bill Veeck.
A chronicle of the growth of baseball in Spanish-speaking Central and South America and the Caribbean.
The 1980s: Bruce Sutter’s St. Louis Cardinals, the Astros “Tequila Sunrise” jersey, and Dwight Gooden’s New York Mets.
Into the 1990s: Rickey Henderson’s Oakland A’s and the 1992 and 1993 World Series champion Toronto Blue Jays.
The stars of 1998’s epic home run race: Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs and Mark McGuire of the St. Louis Cardinals.
The founding father of the modern baseball mascot, the San Diego (nee “KGB”) Chicken.
Our hometown hero in San Diego, the Padres Tony Gwynn. Dad and I first saw him playing point guard for the San Diego State Aztecs, where he remains the all-time assists leader.
The appropriately Mid-Atlantic jersey of Mo’ne Davis, star of the 2014 Little League World Series and the first girl to pitch for a win (a shutout!) in the competition.
A close second to the San Diego Chicken, the Philly Phanatic.
The record-tying home run ball hit by Hammerin’ Hank Aaron…
…and the uniform he wore when he broke Babe Ruth’s all-time mark in April 1974.
The National League’s New York Giants won the Hall Cup, the oldest existing world championship trophy, by beating the St. Louis Browns in 1888.
The National League’s Temple Cup awarded to the “world series” winners from 1894-1897.
The 1976 World Series trophy won by the New York Yankees.
The Gold Glove won in 1968 by Cincinnati Reds catcher Johnny Bench, who appeared in 13 consecutive All-Star games while winning two Most Valuable Player awards and two World Series titles.
We finished our tour of the Baseball Hall of Fame in the Plaque Gallery, the centerpiece of the museum. The gallery has the air of an Ancient Greek temple and contains bronze plaques honoring every member of the Hall of Fame. We paid our respects to the greats of the game, including two all-timers who played for the Padres.
Doubleday Field
After an intense intake of All Things Baseball, Dad and I drove down the street a bit — to see some baseball. There was an adult league game underway at Doubleday Field, which originally opened in 1920 and hosted Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame Game from 1940-2008. We sat in the bleachers for an inning or so before continuing on.Around Cooperstown
I had parked our car next to a building where Susan B. Anthony met with Otsego County residents in 1855, forming a committee to advocate for women's suffrage. “Give woman but the right of suffrage, she will soon have equal laws, and what is wrong will speedily set right,” she reportedly declared at the meeting.Dad and I drove a few blocks to our hotel on the southern tip of Otsego Lake, which is nearly eight miles long and is the source of the mighty Susquehanna River.
For a rare road trip dinner away from the ballpark, we drove back to Main Street to Toscana of Cooperstown, a nice Italian bistro with a stone brick façade, in keeping with the town theme. I had the delicious Veal Sorrentino: a huge veal cutlet that reached both sides of the plate, pan-seared with tomato sauce and eggplant, then topped with roughly eight pounds of mozzarella. The gigantic mound of food came with a side of penne, which felt like mockery.