Days Four and Five - Cooperstown

Oh man!, the day I had been looking forward to for 5 years had arrived. That's when Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine retired from playing baseball. I had watched those guys during the glory days when Atlanta won 14 straight division titles. I knew these guys would be first ballot Hall of Famers and the sports writers made it official this past winter that they were going into the Hall of Fame.  And to make it better, Bobby Cox was also going in with Joe Torre and Tony La Russa. Frank Thomas, one of the most feared hitters of all times was also going to be enshrined.   If there was ever a time to go to an induction, this would be it. Again, I have to give Tammy credit. She was determined to make it happen that we get there.  And we did, we were going to Cooperstown, although we had to get a room that was 40 miles away (Tammy booked it 4 months ago!).  Apparently this was the same story for a lot of people. There are very few hotels there and the ones they do have are booked up years in advance on Hall of Fame weekend.
We arrive on Saturday afternoon and begin our stroll through the streets of Cooperstown. It is a quaint little town nestled in the hills of upstate western New York. You don't just happen by it. But it is like stepping back in time. It is a carnival like atmosphere this weekend. There are former players signing autographs at tables on the street (for a small fee which I didn't like but that was the only way to keep order I guess). We saw former Braves John Smoltz, John Rocker, Ryan Klesko, and Marquis Grissom signing anything people would give them. Pete Rose was also rumored to be in town but we didn't see him.
Then we prepare to witness one of the best kept secrets in all of baseball: the Hall of Famers Parade. At least I did not know of it. But every Hall of Fame Weekend on Saturday at 6:00 the returning HoFers participate in a parade where each player and his spouse or other family member ride in the back of a pickup truck right through the middle of town. This is a chance for the fans to get up close to see some of baseball's living legends. It was unbelievable. There we were just a few yards away from some of the greats of all time. We pushed our way as close as we could to try to get a front row seat. We pushed the boys up to be right along the rail to get a good view no thanks to this guy from Chicago who as Tammy put it, was not "kid minded".
Here is a short list of some of the players we saw: Hank Aaron, Whitey Ford, Ernie Banks, Phil Neikro, Gaylord Perry, Mike Schmidt, George Brett, Johnny Bench, Cal Ripken, Reggie Jackson, Tom Seaver, Tommy Lasorda, Carlton Fisk, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Ricky Henderson, and Barry Larkin just to name a few. Over 50 players returned to honor the new inductees who were at the end of the parade. Finally, the "new guys" came through in alphabetical order so as not to favor one over the other: Cox, Glavine, La Russa, Maddux, Thomas, and Torre.

Greg Maddux in the Hall of Famer Parade

The parade was probably the biggest highlight of the trip for me. It was like a dream. Every baseball fan needs to experience that. I'm sure the grin stayed on my face for hours afterwards. Could it get any better?
We drive the 45 minutes back to Norwich where our room is and spend the night only to drive back the next morning for the next day's events. After finally getting a parking place we walk through Cooperstown to the Hall of Fame. Again, on the way. there are more signings going on at different places. We saw Darryl Strawberry and Dale Murphy among others. We stand in line to get into the Museum for about 30 minutes. We finally get in and see the exhibits for about 45 minutes when we have to leave to catch the shuttle out to where the induction ceremony will be held which is about a mile away. We arrive at this field which reminded me of what Woodstock must have been like. As I found out later, there were approximately 48,000 people there to see the ceremony. Of course we were not even close to the stage. In fact, we must have been 5-6 hundred yards away. Fortunately they had a big jumbo tron screen and adequate speakers to allow us to view the ceremony. Another indication of how large the crowd was could be seen by the fact that there were well over 100 porta johns there too.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

The ceremony began and good thing for us the three Braves inductees went first. No disrespect to the other guys but we were ready to leave at that point as the boys were getting hot. For me, the speeches were great. Very meaningful and moving. I have never been more proud to be a Braves fan. It was an awesome event. After Bobby Cox spoke we decided to head back into town and finish our tour of the Hall of Fame.  The boys were exhausted and did not really appreciate all the baseball history that they were exposed to but I think it will be memorable nonetheless. We had had our fill of baseball nostalgia and headed out of town. I remember thinking as we left what an overwhelming couple of days we had just enjoyed. It would take a while for all of it to really set in. Like I said, this was going to be the highlight of the trip, or so I thought.

Our view at the induction ceremony.

We left Cooperstown and headed 280 miles east to Boston.