Cooperstown

Those of you who know me pretty well (and even those of you who don't know me as well as you would hope but who have happened to have read my last two posts) know that I'm a pretty hard core baseball fan. And this past spring, the Male Parental Unit said to me and Tiger, "The baseball hall of fame is on my bucket list. When can we go?"

Turns out it suited Columbus Day weekend. So we went. The hall of inductees was first, but it turns out that Tiger is only a CASUAL baseball fan and didn't know a good two thirds of the players. So the MPU and I had great fun ribbing him about this.
Me (after about the twelth person he didn't know): Why did we bring him with us again?.
MPU: It certainly wasn't for his baseball knowledge.

Anyway, Tiger took a picture of me with Cal.



After the hall of inductees, we went up to the museum (which is separate from the hall. Which is important, because the museum includes stuff belonging to people who are not in the hall -- like Joe Jackson and Pete Rose)

I was kind of surprised that there was flash photography allowed in both the hall and the museum, since a lot of the stuff there is really old. But anyway, here is a picture of me next to the display about Cal breaking Lou Gehrig's record of consecutive games played:



And here's a display that I discovered in the room about the World Series. The helmet and old-looking bat belonged to Bill Mazeroski when he hit his walk-off home run in 1960, and the resin (rosin?) bag below them belonged to Ralph Terry. The newish bat belonged to Joe Carter.



Curt Schilling's bloody sock (which totally was the coolest thing ever about the museum)



On the way towards the bookstore, I ran into a BoSox fan and ribbed him about his team losing. He took it graciously. I also asked him how it felt to have to root for the Yankees. He said he might need to go into therapy for it.

Outside of the museum is a statue of James Fenimore Cooper, located on the original place where the Cooper family first lived. He even was gracious enough to hold the sock.



The third really cool thing about Cooperstown is that it's on the banks of Lake Otsego,



which is the headwaters of the Susquehanna.



On Saturday, the three of us went down to the river. We threw some sticks into the water, and guessed whether we would be able to beat them to Harrisburg or not



We're pretty certain we did.

It should be noted here that some of these pictures -- notably the ones with me in my Cal T-shirt -- were taken with Tiger's phone. I'm pretty certain he won't mind me using them, but I want to provide credit for them.

After that it was back to PA before heading to Rhinebeck, where I was furiously racing to finish my sweater.