For Visitors, Cooperstown Bats 1.000
Q. I want to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame this summer. Also, a friend told me there is a Hall of Fame fan club that anyone can join. Any information you can provide would be most appreciated.
A. Any baseball fan should plan to spend most of a day at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
On a visit last summer, I spent as much time watching other people react to the hall’s riches as I spent looking at all the goodies: an entire roomful of signed baseball cards, worth a fortune; the two rooms dedicated to Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron; the scale models of all the baseball parks; film clips from baseball movies; a video theater called The Bullpen featuring game film; clips from the game’s best-known sports writers and play-by-play announcers.
The most popular place is the Hall of Fame Gallery, where wall-mounted bronze plaques bear likenesses of all the hall of famers and information on their careers. This was the chief “oohing” and “aahing” place for the groups of men, the kids and dads and the whole families touring the hall that day.
The Library Bookshop has a good selection of baseball books, photos, magazines and videos. If you want souvenirs, the museum gift shop is full of them; my favorite was bags of pasta shaped like little bats and gloves (manufactured in Spokane by Buckeye Beans & Herbs Inc.).
The hall, a handsome brick building, was opened in 1939, a century after Abner Doubleday was credited with creating the game of baseball.
There’s a Doubleday Cafe in town, a Doubleday Motel, and a big-league Hall of Fame game is played annually at Doubleday Park.
Cooperstown, population about 2,500, has another claim to fame besides baseball. It was named for Judge William Cooper, who founded the town in 1786.
His son, novelist James Fenimore Cooper, wrote “The Last of the Mohicans” and many other frontier tales. Otsego Lake, which borders the town, was the “Glimmerglass” of Cooper’s tales.
Cooperstown is 70 miles west of Albany, N.Y., surrounded by central New York state’s pretty hills and forests.
It’s a handsome town with big old houses sitting on big lots shaded by big trees. The whole place looks newly vacuumed and fresh-scrubbed.
There are several other museums: Corvette Americana Hall of Fame, with 35 ‘Vettes on display plus memorabilia of the Indianapolis 500.
Farmers’ Museum illustrates 19th century rural life. Fenimore House Museum has Cooper memorabilia, a collection of American folk art and an American Indian wing.
The fan club is called Friends of the Hall of Fame and members pay $25 a year to get an annual pass, a yearbook, a T-shirt and a quarterly newsletter.
For more information or an application, call 607-547-0230 or write to Friends of the Hall of Fame, P.O. Box 590, Cooperstown, NY 13326.
Admission to the Baseball Hall of Fame, including exhibits at the adjacent library and archives, is $9.50 for persons over age 12, $8 for seniors 65 and above, and $4 for ages 7 to 12. Children under 7 enter free.
Combination tickets that also include the Farmers’ and Fenimore museums are available.
The complex is open daily except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., May through September, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. the rest of the year.
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