One Lap

Date: 10/21/2013

Day: 25

Location: Cooperstown, NY

Miles Today: 322

Total Miles: 5344

Cooperstown, Seen on the road

Today was dedicated to the drive to Cooperstown, NY and a visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame. It was all of a four hour drive on the Thruway, I-90, over much of the same territory we traveled yesterday.

Twelve years ago the Colonel and the Mrs. Colonel made a similar long drive, this one in Greece. That drive was all day long and difficult and resulted in about an hour among the knee high rock ruins of "Sandy Pylos." That, you will recall (if you remember your Odyssey,) was where Telemachus and Nestor met, or would have met had they existed in history. It is possible to stand in the spot in the entry hall where Homer imagined that meeting happened. Way cool for a classicist.

That was a good day at the end of a long drive. So was this.

There is no reason to go to Cooperstown other than to visit the Hall of Fame, although this part of New York is stunningly beautiful this time of the year.

The Colonel is a baseball fan of only moderate intensity. The game is, yes, wonderful, but a dab once in a while is sufficient to assuage his itch. Here at the Mother Church, however, one cannot avoid thinking of the game and its place in American life. One of the most devoted fans the Colonel ever knew, Peter Howard, said that baseball is life with the petty distractions removed. In it he saw courage and faint-heartedness, strength and failure, skill and ineptness. He saw boys become men and sometimes not become men.

Perhaps so. On this Monday in fall there were relatively few people at the Hall and no children. Those present moved about quietly and spoke, when they spoke at all, in the quiet tone appropriate, yes, for a church.

Everything in the museum is subject for a photograph and some thought. The Colonel will restrain himself.

Babe Ruth

This is an oil on canvas by Ross R. Rosen, 2013. The painting is at least six feet from bottom to top. Mr. Rosen seems to have captured the essential sadness that seems to be lurking in the back of every image of Ruth. While he was certainly successful on his own terms, wealthy, popular, there is just that look in his eyes seen so clearly here. A romantic might say the sadness of a clown.

Buck O'Neil

John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil (November 13, 1911 – October 6, 2006) was a first baseman and manager in the negro American League, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs. He later became the first African American coach in Major League Baseball. You may know him as one of the primary narrators of Ken Burns documentary series on Baseball.

His playing career, while impressive, was not sufficient to earn a plaque the Hall of Fame; he fell one vote short. He was, however, certainly the games best ambassador for more than a generation. He saw Babe Ruth hit home runs and watched Roger Clemens throw strikes. He talked hitting with Lou Gehrig and Ichiro Suzuki. And he told stories about the game better than anyone ever has.

There are heated discussions on how this man should be honored by the game. Baseball has, the Colonel thinks, done the right thing. As you turn to enter the hall where the plaques honoring the greatest players of the game reside, you pass this life size statue of Mr. O'Neil in a business suit with the details of his life on the wall behind him.

Ted Williams

This is what plaques in the hall look like; here one honoring the great Ted Williams. The Colonel always feels a twinge of pity for the poor North Korean fighter pilots who had Mr. Williams on their tail in his Marine F-9F jet fighter.

This particular image was chosen because of the doohickey under the plaque. Folks in the Hall of Fame who served in the military during war time have the branch of service identified in this way. Is it appropriate to include this information in this venue? At some point the Colonel will try to write something about the influence of the military in American culture. It's a big topic.