Baseball Hall of Fame

Thursday, October 2nd.

We woke up today regretting that we'd left our towels out to dry overnight. A massive rain shower in the middle of the night had drenched everything. Oh well.

After showering and spending some time organizing our most recent purchases we headed back to the camper registration office. But we found it still closed. According to a sign further down the road it was supposed to be open, but there was nothing posted at the office itself to tell us anything about how, when or where to get a hold of anyone. We hung around for about half an hour without luck and then decided to leave a note saying that we'd be back later in the day to pay and to hopefully register for another night. And then we headed towards Cooperstown.

Once we found the town and found a place to park we took a walk up and down Main Street to get situated. The town did still have a lot of the idyllic charm that we'd heard it would have, but the hundreds of thousands of tourists that the Baseball Hall of Fame draws there every year had left their mark on the town. It seemed like everyone in the town lived off of the tourism in some way. There were some really nice shops with genuine baseball memorabilia, owned and run by the kind of people that ought to own shops like that. But there were also places that were just out to exploit the town's claim to fame by making some quick money on overpriced baseball trinkets. Or even if they were selling something completely different few of them could resist the urge to give their shops some corny little baseball name like "The Third Base" or "The Seventh Inning". But for a die-hard baseball fan that just can't get enough of the sport and the merchandise it spawns, however tacky it may be, Cooperstown must be heaven.

We had an overpriced but pretty good hot dog for lunch at "Black Bart's" and then walked back down Main Street to the Doubleday Field ballpark located behind the parking lot where we'd parked. A bunch of old guys sporting all sorts of different team uniforms where playing a game on the field, so we sat down to watch for a while. We'd hoped to get permission to gently roll the couch out to get a picture on home plate, but the "greenskeeper" was very protective of his field and wouldn't allow that at all.

We'd already bought tickets for the Baseball Hall of Fame but had decided to follow the advice of the lady in the ticket booth and wait until 3 o'clock to enter, after which time our tickets would be valid for a visit the following day also. If the shops on Main Street had seemed a bit on the tacky side the Hall of Fame was a whole different... well, ballgame :) The exhibits were very nicely done, and even though we come from a country completely deprived of baseball, have only a very basic concept of the game and can only name about four different major league ballplayers we could still appreciate the atmosphere of the Museum. We looked at the array of antique and classic baseballs and uniforms and bats and mits with the nostalgic interest that we have in all antique pop-culture relics. But it is not hard to imagine how real baseball fans must fall to their knees in awe and respect upon seeing the bat Babe Ruth hit his 60th homer with or when touching the locker that Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle both used. For real fans the Museum must truly be the Holy Shrine of Baseball that it claims to be, and the dimly lit display cases must really seem lit by celestial rays of light. Even the short multimedia presentation of the "heart and soul of baseball" that we saw really managed to capture the spirit of the game in a very inspiring way, rather than being "in your face" pumped up entertainment as one might fear. While waiting for the show to begin we watched an old film of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first" routine and had a good laugh at that.

When the museum closed at 5 o'clock we headed back to the parking lot to take a few sofa pictures outside the ballpark. We then drove up and parked outside the museum to get a picture. We'd barely unloaded the couch when two security guards came over to ask what we were doing. We explained the idea to them and once we convinced them that we were doing it solely for our own enjoyment and not for any commercial purpose they let us go ahead and take all the pictures we wanted. A family from San Francisco was already there taking pictures outside the Museum and asked us to take a picture of them with their camera. They then inquired about the couch and after we explained it to them we got them to pose for a picture on the sofa. When they left to take some pictures outside the ballpark someone else had already stopped to hear what we were doing. Rudi, who had moved to Boston from the former Soviet Union back in the 70s and who was also visiting Cooperstown for a few days, had seen us ten minutes earlier as we took pictures outside Doubleday Field. He'd thought that the couch was some sort of permanent installation there for people to take pictures on. So he was surprised to find both us and the couch outside the Hall of Fame all of a sudden. He was carrying around a video camera so he took some footage of us on the couch and of our van. In return we got him to sit for a photo on the couch. While Dan stood around chatting with him about photo equipment and car trouble and the like, Jens got to talking to a couple from Detroit that happened to pass by and also wondered what the story was with the couch. We almost felt like we'd turned into more of an attraction that the Hall of Fame... :)

Since pretty much all of Cooperstown closed up at 5 o'clock we headed out of town and back in the direction of our campground while looking for a place to eat. We drove right into an enormous rain shower and actually had to pull of the road for a while. We didn't spot anywhere to eat and finally decided to drive up to a nearby KOA Campground to ask them for advice on where to eat. The guy there suggested "TJ's Country Inn" back down the road we came from. It was hidden off to the side of the road, so we'd missed it the first time around. It was truly a little local restaurant. We assumed TJ was the older guy preparing the food out in the kitchen. His son waited on the tables in the restaurant. He appeared to be slightly mentally retarded, but in a very amiable "Rain Man" sort of way. He was very friendly and polite and the food was really good. We both had a big, hearty burger served with fries and "vegetable". The latter could be selected from three choices; corn, peas or apple sauce. None of them really seemed to go well with a cheese burger but we went with corn and apple sauce, respectively, and it turned out to be quite good.

We made it back to the campground right before 8pm which is when the office was supposed to close according to the sign at the entrance. It was already closed though, as it had been at noon, but luckily we happened to run into a park ranger. He'd gotten our note earlier so he opened up the office and helped us register and pay for the two nights. And so we drove back to our campsite with a sound mind. And discovered that leaving our towels out to dry during the day hadn't been a very good idea either...