Jonesing For Baseball? Go To Cooperstown
Now that the season has ended and we're faced with a long off-season that will consist of reading reports about how third basemen are whining that they deserve to earn $30 million a year for playing baseball, and not a penny less, we all need a trip to Cooperstown. Walking into the Baseball Hall of Fame and being greeted by life-sized statues of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams is an instant reminder of why we love baseball in the first place. We spent three hours wandering around the galleries, explaining screwballs and Carl Hubbell, Koufax and Drysdale, Walter Johnson and the '69 Mets to our little guy. And when we got to the area of contemporary lockers, he started screeching things like, "Jeter! Johan Santana!!" Which made
everyone in the room smile along with us.
Besides that, the trees are all turning color and shedding their leaves in upstate New York right now and Cooperstown is one of the handsomest colonial towns that I've ever seen with its stately homes and classic Main Street. Like our 7-year-old's room, the place is loaded with baseball souvenirs and memorabilia, and the Doubleday Café is a fine place for a meal and a beer. And you don't need to make $30 million a year to afford to go there; we pulled off the whole day for about fifty bucks. We're planning a return visit next summer for an intensive seminar on DiMaggio.