The gift shop also is right there on the first floor, though it`s better to save that for last. The temptation to load up with souvenirs is strong, especially when victory-starved Chicago fans catch a glimpse of the shelf lined with world championship mugs, from Boston, 1903, to Kansas City, 1985.
It`s a long walk down to the mug signifying the last World Series triumph by the Sox in 1917, but an even longer stroll to the Cub mug. That one is engraved ”1908,” to commemorate the World Series when the Cubs beat Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers for the second straight year.
But there`s plenty of success to dwell on elsewhere in the museum. In the first-floor Directory Room and the Great Moments room, you`ll find huge photographic blow-ups of spectacular plays. The Cooperstown Room offers background on the growth of the baseball museum and a watered-down account of how Abner Doubleday allegedly invented baseball in 1839.
One of the most famous exhibits is there–the so-called ”Doubleday baseball,” dating from 1836. The shrunken pellet, discolored and torn, inspired Stephen Clark to mount the campaign that convinced baseball to pick quaint, off-the-beaten-track Cooperstown as the Hall of Fame site.
A trek to the lower level is worth the trip, if only to see the huge, hand-crafted Cincinnati baseball trophy. Uniforms of all 26 big-league teams are there, along with displays showing how baseballs, bats, shoes and gloves are made.
The second floor is a Heartbreak Hotel for Cubs and Sox fans, which should offer them group rates. It features selected highlights from baseball history, among them the saga of the 1969 Mets, guaranteed to depress ex-Bleacher Bums who watched the Cubs blow a 9 1/2-game lead late in that traumatic season.
No mention is made of 1959, the last Sox pennant year, or 1945, when the Cubs last made it to the World Series. The only solace is a reminder of the Cubs` glory decade, from 1929 to 1938, when they brought home a National League flag every three years.
The rest of the second floor contains detailed exhibits on black baseball history, the evolution of equipment, world tours by barnstorming big leaguers, All-Star games and a special niche for Casey Stengel, one of the all-time characters. There you`ll find that some form of baseball was played as part of an Egyptian religious ritual around 2000 B.C., and discover it was 1744 when the word ”baseball” first appeared in print.
Photographic proof of wretched conditions and segregation in the Negro Leagues explains this blot on baseball history. Great players like Satchel Paige, given a belated chance in the majors by Bill Veeck, had to perform their astounding feats in near obscurity.
Fun-loving fans will get their kicks when they discover a display of sheet music from baseball songs that never made the hit parade. Foremost among them is ”Let`s Get the Umpire`s Goat” by Jack Norworth, who did considerably better with a ditty entitled ”Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Then there`s the ever-popular ”Cubs on Parade, 1907,” dedicated to Frank Chance, the Peerless Leader of that powerhouse.
Ruth gets the spotlight again on the third floor, with the bat and ball from his historic 60th homer in 1927 among the mementoes grouped around his Yankee Stadium locker. Baseball cards, ballparks, the World Series, uniform evolution, minor leagues and youth baseball all compete for space. Electronics buffs tend to give them just a cursory glance before heading back to the Hall of Fame`s newest hit, a bank of IBM computers in the first-floor Cooperstown Room.
It`s a prototype system, donated by the company, that puts more than 2 million combinations of information at a fan`s fingertips. Onlookers crowd around TV screens to punch up color displays of data on players, teams, leagues, records, parks or any other aspect of the sport, past and present. The desired category can be plucked from a dazzling array of multiple-choice options, turning baseball history into a video game.
”One person sees another at the controls, and the crowd begins to build,” says Pat Rooney, the museum`s director of information systems.
When kids are tracked down at the computer, they`re often too bleary-eyed or hungry to complain about leaving. There`s time to see it all in the summer, but from Nov. 1 through April 30, the hours are 9 to 5. The museum is closed only on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year`s Day, with a steady trickle of visitors showing up all winter, except when heavy snow blankets the Cooperstown area.
”If the Hall of Fame had been built in Chicago or St. Louis, you might draw more people, but a great deal of charm would be lost,” says Hall of Fame director Talbot. ”The type of people we get here are nothing like the drunks and rowdies you see in some ballparks.”
The visitors keep coming back: 222,120 in 1985; more than 200,000 in 15 of the last 16 years; an all-time peak of 260,763 in 1973. By the time the majority of them are finished with the first floor of the baseball museum, their dogs are barking, their stomachs rumbling and their eyeballs bulging, but there`s more to see.
”I guess we`re getting close to the finite limits of the museum,”
Talbot concedes. ”Next August, we`ll pay off the last note from the $3 million expansion in 1980. From now on, we`ll concentrate more on quality and redesign of exhibits, so people won`t keep seeing the same things.”
The focal point for the next expansion project is the Alfred Corning Clark gym, on the museum`s eastern flank. It`s scheduled to become the new multimedia audio-visual center after the Clark Foundation cuts the ribbon on its latest gift to Cooperstown in October–a dazzling $12 million community center, complete with Olympic-size pool and every conceivable facility.
Museum officials aren`t anxious to talk about that now, for two reasons. First, nobody in Cooperstown wants to upstage the Clark Foundation, least of all the Hall of Fame. Second, there`s a rumor that expansion plans might include installing a public batting range like the one next to Doubleday Field, and village residents are edgy.
Visitors wouldn`t mind a plush new theater to watch the Hall of Fame library`s array of tapes and movies, many of them rare. Viewing them now requires a trek to a small room in the basement of the already-overcrowded library.
The top floor of the library bulges at the seams under the weight of 150 years of baseball lore. Librarian Heitz, who enjoys keeping track of it all, is hard-pressed to stay even with the overflow.
”Our books, about 10,000 volumes, are the smallest part of the collection,” Heitz says. ”We have 12,000 file folders, millions of documents and 100,000 pictures, so space is a problem. At this growth rate, we`ll double in size every 30 to 40 years.”
The library is open to the public, also offering reference and photo reproduction services by mail. It`s a fascinating galaxy of old newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, statistics, scorecards, autographs, cartoons, letters, poems, phonograph records, films and videotapes. Monday: Cooperstown, the birthplace of many American traditions.
