BaZe Ball Hall of Fame

Bazeball Hall of Fame

Cooperstown, NY the Mecca of baseball, but instead of walking around the temple a number of times by the thousands of believers, you drive around the museum a thousand times looking for a parking place.

What a place. Overheard conversations, “We are never going to get dad out of here.”
“I don’t want any more baseball!” “I am hungry and tired.”

Old Doubleday, a career soldier, really came up with a great game. With all those rules and statistics, and uniforms, and cultures blended together…..who’d of thunk it? What a historical record from old leather gloves to modern equipment, from rock like balls to new signed balls in glass. And the old uniforms looked like the games were played in northern Canada with wool everything.

I have been a fan since 1954 and spent my childhood years, laying on the floor in front of a floor model radio, listening to the Braves (then in Milwaukee after moving from Boston) become the world champs. Spahn, Matthews, Aaron, Logan, Buhl, Adcock, Covington, Schoendingst, Crandall, Burdette and all the boys came back to me as I toured the Hall. Spahn, Aaron and Matthews were the only Braves from that era enshrined in the Hall but all the others helped put them there.

Spent a lot time in my granddads lap telling him about the latest game and asking when the Braves would make the World Series. When I showed him my glove he would say, “Tommy, that is a peach!” Or when the Braves won a doubleheader, he would respond, “The hell you say!”

Fun to see all the little kids in baseball garb talking the history with their dads, and the wives sitting on benches in the middle of the museum waiting. I’d say good payback for all the time spent in shopping malls.

Cooperstown is beautiful on the shores of a lake with big old summer homes lining the banks and Doubleday Field in the middle of downtown. Lots of baseball memorabilia shops and a good place to pick up a rare Milwaukee Braves hat! This year’s induction ceremony saw Jim Rice and Ricky Henderson inducted, just last weekend. The game goes on! The hell you say!