Play Ball

Shortly after we arrived in New York I got one of those four day weekends that the military likes to hand out and took Carter for some one on one time with dad. Our destination? The quaint village of Cooperstown, NY, about 110 miles south of us. Odds are, when you hear Cooperstown you either are not a sports fan and have no idea what one would find there or you immediately know that it is home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. I love baseball and have always wanted to go to Cooperstown and while I didn't get to spend as much time there as I would have liked I still spent four hours there, which is about the max limit of a two year old who didn't really care for the exhibits so much as running around like a crazy person while dad kept one eye on him and one eye on everything else. Now, I left the camera at home so all I had was my cell phone, and while the camera on the phone itself is actually better than my actual camera I'm still getting used to it so not all the pictures are of the same quality. With that being said, here is a small sampling of what we saw that fun September day.

These seats are part of the "Diamond Dreams: Women in Baseball" exhibit commemorating the All American Girls Professional Baseball league that started up during WWII and lasted for about 12 seasons. This league gained widespread notoriety with the 1992 Tom Hanks and Geena Davis film A League of Their Own. The seats came from one of their stadiums and Carter really enjoyed walking up and down the row raising and lowering the seats. It was all I could do to get him to stop and pose for a picture.

I wouldn't say that the seats were his favorite part of the museum though. He was absolutely phascinated by the Philly Phanatic, the mascot of the Philadelphia Phillies. He really wanted to be get inside the display case so he could give the phanatic a "biiiig hug!"

It is no secret that my favorite baseball team is the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim so I had to make sure Carter saw all the awesomeness that was displayed in the team locker in the hall. Something only slightly less awesome was on display in the San Francisco Giants locker, the ball Barry Bonds hit for this Major League record breaking 756th home run. The last several years of Barry's career has been shrouded with allegations that he used "performance enhancing drugs" to achieve several of his historic records including 7 league MVP awards, 14 all star team selections, single season home run record (73 in 2001) and career home run record (762). Home run ball #756 was the ball that broke Hank Aaron's record for most home runs and while it's difficult to make out in the picture (open it at full size and you can see it), the fan who caught the ball turned it over to the hall of fame AFTER he had marked it with a big asterisk signifying that he believed the record to have been set with the help of artificial means.

There is a wall dedicated to every perfect game/no hitter thrown in major league history. The majority of the wall has a ball used in each game, a picture of the pitcher, who they were playing, basic information like that. At the end of the wall is a shrine to Nolan Ryan, who has more no hitters than any other pitcher in the game. The first four of his record setting seven such games were as a member of the Angels.

I think my favorite exhibit at the wall was a display with a World Series ring from pretty much every champion in baseball. Unfortunately the lighting the room and the reflection from the display case didn't equate to good pictures (at least from a Driod) but it was pretty cool to see the evolution of the general size and gaudiness of the rings over the years. There was a lot of bling in that case. My only question is if they were actual complete replicas or if they were cubic zirconia instead of actual diamonds/other gemstones. I was of course drawn to the Angels 2002 ring, they're only one in the case... so far.

The most famous part of the museum is the plaque room where each of the 232 players, 20 managers, 9 umpires, and 31 pioneers and executives inducted into the hall of fame have their likeness and bio immortalized forever in bronze. I thought that I had snagged a picture of the five original inductees from 1936 (Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner [who by the way, is also the face on the most valuable and covited baseball card]). I thought I had taken a picture of the five initial inductee plaques but I did not, I did, however get a shot of this monument in the plaque room recognizing the service of each hall of famer in the armed forces from the Civil War through the Korean War, including two veterans of two wars Larry MacPhail (US Army in WWI and WWII and the father of the only father and son hall of fame team with Lee MacPhail, neither players but executives) and Ted Williams (USMC in WWII and Korea).

Of course, this is not the last time that I will visit the Hall. I plan on taking my dad before I leave Ft Drum, and then again at some time in the future when they let Carter in!