Wednesday, August 31, 2005

The Origin of Baseball


It is so great having a couple of visitors with us because we get to share with them all the crazy stuff that has happened, some of which is a little too inappropriate to post on this site. Plus it is such a breath of fresh air to have someone new to laugh at my jokes and to have other people’s shannigans to make fun of. Like when we were going through the New York Thruway toll booth and Brian asked the attendant if they stay open 24 hours she quickly responded, ‘We take every damn penny we can get’. She was a gal who probably doesn’t send her boss a post card from her vacation. Sunday night, the night after the Boston game, we stayed in just outside of Albany, NY. We went into a Cracker Barrel for dinner, they were closed, but a young girl was still working in the store. Here was our exchange:

Scott: Excuse me, do you guys sell Ethernet cables?

Central NY High School Valedictorian: (blind look at Scott, mouth slightly ajar)

Scott: You know, an internet cable?

Central NY High School Valedictorian: (blind look at Scott, mouth slightly ajar)

Scott: I guess you wouldn’t have that here, it being a “Country Store” and all.

Central NY High School Valedictorian: You should try the Wal-Mart.

Scott: Bingo.

Then Rick asked her for directions to the aforementioned Wal-Mart. This took 12 minutes. It was so frustrated to listen to I thought about soothing it would feel to give myself paper cuts in between my fingers with the post cards they had on display. The dialogue finally concluded with this nugget, “Yeah, it is pretty easy to get lost in this town”. The only way someone could get lost in this town (population 1,562) is if they were blind and put their head down and spun around 48 times and then sprinted in whatever direction they faced. Even then it might be possible to smell your way to the Wal-Mart.

The fun, as you might imagine, did not stop once we got to the Wal-Mart. Interesting observation – the smaller the town the larger the Wal-Mart, go figure. This one was complete with a grocery store, photo lab, batting cage, Olympic size swimming pole, truck driving academy, and pharmacy. All under one roof. Geoff and I headed to the electronic section to take care of business. We were just about to start looking for Rick and Brian when they stumbled upon us. My uncle was carrying 7 boxes of Cheez-its and my dad had a case of beer. That was until bottles of beer began showering the tile floors of the home appliance section. Supposedly, the bottom fell out. Just a little gift of ale and glass my dad left for the high school salutatorian to mop up that night. They then went back to the grocery section and picked up a case of the same beer. But these men are college graduates – as our president put it, ‘fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, won’t get fooled again’ – so they inspected the bottom. Just as Brian tilted the case in the direction of Rick, in order to see the bottom, a broken bottle sprayed beer all down Rick’s nice khaki shorts. 2 brothers, 2 cases of beer, 2 broken bottles, 1 upset Wal-Mart.

But all the tomfoolery was saved for Sunday because on Monday we entered a sanctuary. Cooperstown. Home of the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and the birthplace of our national pastime. Folklore has it that Civil War General Abner Doubleday invented the game of baseball in Cooperstown, NY and so in 1939 Major League Baseball opened a Hall of Fame there to honor those who have graced our game and have played it in a god-like fashion. Names like Cobb, Ruth, Gehring, Mantle, Koufax, Clemente, Ryan echo through streets of the town.

On our drive out there we past a beautiful sports complex absolutely packed with cars. We realized there was some baseball games being played so we pulled over and parked to check it out. It was some national travel ball tournament being played at Cooperstown Dreams Park, an 18-field complex complete with batting cages and dormitories! As we were walking to the closest game a homerun came flying over the fence. Unfortunately, some squirrelly kids beat us to it. This would not happen again. We watched for about 20 minutes, the red team was dominating the blue team. Every kid on the red team was about 6’1” weighing a lean 180 lbs. There were some murmurs of steroids usage spread through the bleachers. Every kid hit a moon shot – they had an 8 run second inning. The blue team pitcher started crying. It didn’t help that we were heckling him. Oh, stop, I know what you are thinking, ‘how could you do that, he is just a kid’, if you would have seen the meatballs he was putting over the plate you would have done the same thing. He might as well have pitching underhand. Plus the blue team ended up getting all those runs back the next inning, aided by a homerun by no other than the blue team’s version of Chan Ho Park, the same kid we were heckling. It was then that we got serious. Geoff, Brian, and I retired to the outfield in hopes of catching a homerun ball. However the entire stadium is walled in so we couldn’t see the action. I then climbed a tree and relayed if it was a right handed or left handed batter at the plate. We were playing every kid to pull, at the speed these kids were throwing it would be hard not to, so Brian was in right field when sure enough a kid parked one over the fence. He caught it, hit me in stride 50 feet up, I sprinted through the parking lot, hoping to get lost in the cars before the squirrelly kids could come chase after the ball, and I yelled at Geoff to start up the car. He did, I dove in, we circled back around to pick up my dad and uncle, and we took off with an official Cooperstown Dreams Park souvenir. As I write this it is velcroed to the dashboard of the road warrior. The perfect hood ornament.

Once we got into the village of Cooperstown we removed our caps in reverence for those have been immortalized there. Our first stop was Doubleday Field; it is a small diamond with about 1000 seats just behind Main Street. Every year MLB plays one regular season game there. I could only imagine what it is like to see a Major League game in a stadium smaller than most colleges.

We walked Main Street a bit and checked out the local color all in anticipation of what was to come. It was about 2 PM by the time we entered the Hall, we only had 7 hours until closing, no time to dilly-dally. The museum alone is worth the 3500 mile drive from Southern California. They have everything. It is spectacular. We saw Babe Ruth’s jersey, Walter Johnson’s spikes, Stan Musial’s bat, Curt Schilling’s bloody sock, everything. We touched the cornerstone of Ebbet’s Field and pondered at the historical significance of the Rally Monkey. We were drowning in a sea of baseball and none of us wanted to come up for air.

In about 150 years there have only been about 15000 Major League baseball players. Only about 1% of those are enshrined at the Hall of Fame. There are more people at the average Blue Jays game than have ever played in the majors. Only the best of the best belong. Something special was going on here.

We got out just after dark and started driving towards Toronto. About 20 miles down the road we pulled into some BBQ joint. This was the type of town that doesn’t appear on the map and cell phones have no service. We were their only patrons and we sat at the bar so we could watch the Cubs Dodger game. Only one person was working that night, she was in her mid twenties and talked to us our entire meal. She was real excited about the new snow mobile she bought because now she can get around for 9 months out of the year. All four of us had the best beef brisket in 5 states, popped some coins in the juke box and put on some rockin’ tunes, and sipped on some beers as we watched the Dodgers dismantle the Cubbies. This is how baseball was meant to be enjoyed.

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