Kennedy: Return to Cooperstown after 30 years rekindles warm memories
A display case at the National Baseball Hall of Fame called The Big Red Machine features Joe Morgan’s tiny second baseman’s glove and catcher Johnny Bench’s decker. Photo: Patrick Kennedy
August 17, 2024
By Patrick Kennedy
Canadian Baseball Network
Whether you're watching a game at Doubleday Field in the broiling afternoon sun, or perusing the endless line of merchandise in theme shops, or simply walking the empty streets in the coolness of dawn, Cooperstown is a fulfilling wonderland of nostalgia for any die-hard hardball fan.
The names on the stores say it all: Yastrzemski Sports, Seventh-Inning Stretch, Safe At Home, Mickey's Place, Shoeless Joe's, Where It All Began – Bat Company, to name a few. Then of course there's the main attraction on Main Street, the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In this quaint, one-stoplight village of less than 2,000 souls, it's baseball all day, every day.
During a recent three-day stay in Cooperstown for my son's baseball tournament, and despite a 30-year gap between visits, it seems as if nothing has changed, though indubitably much has.
The first stop for many of the teenage ballplayers from Kingston is the Wood Bat Factory Hitting Range next to Doubleday Field, where $5 buys you 10 pitches from one of several mechanical arms anchored approximately 60 feet away. To really get into the “swing of things,” 50 dollars American buys you 250 pitches. Batters choose their own speed, which tops out at a blurring 90 mph.
We're here one week after Induction Weekend when players Adrian Beltre, Todd Helton and Joe Mauer and manager Jim Leyland were enshrined, their bronze plaques now lining the oak walls along with 342 others in the museum's Plaque Gallery. How hard is it to be voted in? Roughly one percent of the roughly 22,000 men who have played major league baseball are represented here. The chain-smoking Leyland is one of only 10 managers.
Forty years ago, I covered the 1984 Induction Weekend. For a hopeless baseball junkie, it was a never-ending fix, a rush of excitement and unforgettable moments. That year five new inductees – Don Drysdale, Harold “Peewee” Reese, Harmon Killebrew, Luis Aparicio and Rick Farrell – were introduced by the outgoing baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn. They were joined on stage by 28 fellow Hall of Famers and saluted by a crowd of 5,000 fans on the grounds of the Hall of Fame. Among the fans I interviewed that day was 63-year-old Dorothy Ruth Pirone, daughter of the game's most recognizable star, Babe Ruth.
The highlight of that weekend for this rookie scribe was an informal gathering of media and Hall of Famers past and present at the palatial O-te-se-ga Hotel on the southern shore of Otsego Lake. Armed with a baseball in my camera bag, I shamelessly obtained autographs from some of the heroes of the sport. That tactic is typically frowned upon by seasoned reporters, but hey, I was as green as they come, and I wasn't about to pass up this opportunity in case this journalism thing didn't pan out. Peewee and Big D signed, as did Killer Killebrew and Little Luis from the '84 class. New York Yankees lefthander Lefty Gomez and St. Louis slugger Johnny Mize signed after pausing a discussion on a decades-old pitch that went Lefty's way. Detroit's peerless second baseman Charlie Gehringer autographed the ball while opening up on the merits of using a small glove at second base.
Baseball aside, the village – Cooperstown was founded in 1786 by William Cooper, the father of famed novelist James Fenimore Cooper – seems stuck in time. Tucked into the southern tip of Otsego Lake, Cooperstown is surrounded by verdant hills and rolling countryside. Handsomely preserved 19th-century wood-frame and brick buildings and eye-catching gingerbread houses dot the village, whose population has remained virtually unchanged for scores of years. It has steadfastly avoided the crush of commercialism, with nary a fast-food franchise or a mall in sight.
The highlight of any visit to Cooperstown, especially for the ardent baseball fan, is the Hall of Fame, which features the “definitive repository” of the game's treasures. Babe Ruth's locker is here along with the 42-ounce bat he wielded against the likes of fellow inductees Walter Johnson, Grover Cleveland Alexander and Lefty Grove and others en route to clubbing 714 “big flies.” Hack Wilson's Size 6 cleats are here, although to this day no player has been able to fill them figuratively: Wilson's 191 RBIs remains baseball's single-season highwater mark. In another showcase entitled The Big Red Machine, Cincinnati Reds second baseman Joe Morgan's Little League-size glove sits next to teammate Johnny Bench's decker with its “heart of the hide” pocket.
In another part of the Hall of Fame, on a TV screen replaying famous plays and home runs, Willie Mays sprints full out with his back to the plate in the spacious Polo Grounds outfield to once again rob Cleveland batter Vic Wertz of extra bases in the '54 World Series. Moments later the scene changes and now New York Yankees light-hitting utility player Bucky Dent breaks the hearts of Red Sox fans everywhere with a game-turning three-run home in a 1978 American League East tie-breaker. Blissfully watching that replay is 62-year-old Stuart Montgomery of New York City.
“I got hell from my mom for skipping school that day,” the retired city worker says, “but boy was it worth it.”
For the fervent fan, a visit to the Hall of Fame is beautifully summed up in this quote from New Jersey newspaperman Bill Pennington: “You arrive expecting to tour baseball's past. What you discover is your own...It is pictures of places you've never been and belongings of people you've never met. Yet you are drawn to its scuffed baseballs and gritty photographs as if they were your own. And in a way, they are.”
Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com