Baseball Mecca: Cooperstown and upstate New York

Baseball-wise, Main Street of Cooperstown is a money-draining heaven. The end of July and beginning of August is induction time. If you don't mind crowds and want to be around other baseball nuts (and stars), go during the induction weekend.

Quick Tips:

Winter starts early and ends late. The roads to Coops are hilly and small. Go in the late spring or summer. If you are planning to stay in Coops, book early. For the induction weekend, rooms book at the end of winter.

Best Way To Get Around:

Most of the time, there is ample parking around Cooperstown, with trolley service connecting the sites to the parking areas. All the baseball stores and the HoF and Doubleday Field are contained within a block or two. So after parking, walking is the only way to go.

If you want to stay by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, you can't get any closer than the Baseball Town Motel. The Baseball Town is just a couple of doors down from the HoF, and is right above one of the memorabilia stores (in fact, registration is at the counter of the store).

The owners of the store/motel are fine people and very friendly. I have stayed here twice (both times in 2001, February and for the Induction Weekend) and the owner told me as I checked in for the second time there that she would put me in the same room I had when I'd stayed the first time.

The rooms (or at least my room, number 6 I think it is) are dark, small and slightly shabby, but still clean. The rooms all have color TV, but I forget the extent of the channels. I remember local stations from Utica and Oneonta, as well as ESPN. Each room has an air conditioner, but otherwise the rooms are no-frills. light-weight towels and perhaps the smallest bar of soap I've ever seen. Like most motels, there is a vending machine on property.

The side-benefit "frill" is location. You are on Main Street, and not only close to the HoF, but pretty much everything one would want to see is on this one drag. The motel also has free parking for its guests, and during the summer, you can't ask for a better perk. The parking is out back, with a staircase leading right to the lot. This is the secondary entrance to the motel, with another entrance on Main Street itself.

The prices vary depending on the season. Cooperstown is very slow in the winter months, and some places reduce their hours drasticly. The price at the Baseball Town Motel reflect this. My winter stay was about $60 bucks a night while the summer weekend rate was up over $100.

For a small town, Cooperstown has a large number of accomodations. What sets the Baseball Town aside from the other places I've stayed at are the location and hospitality of the owners. I'd call this is the low-end of the accomodations in Cooperstown, but if that's so, low-end here is middle-end compared to other places I've been.

"A drinking town with a baseball problem." This is the slogan of the Doubleday Cafe. Despite these words, the Doubleday Cafe is not a drunkard's paradise. Instead it is more of a restaurant with a small bar by the entrance.

This one-room restaurant is attractive. The front side a large window and the red brick walls are covered with posters and pictures of local sights and national sports icons. The room has high ceilings which made me think this place was once a warehouse.

The food is good and is served in an appetizing fashion. Most places in Cooperstown seem to be either simple, diner-like cuisine or upscale. The Doubleday Cafe is one of the few in-between places. For lunch and dinner, burgers, nachos and your usual pub fare seems to be the way to go. The cafe also offers omelettes for brunch, but I've never been here at the appropriate time of day.

To live up to the hype - or at least the slogan - the Doubleday Cafe offers a wide selection of beers. Your regular national and imports are represented, as are a few local selections.

In trying to make this restaurant out to be something special, T-shirts and pint mugs are sold. Both feature the cafe's logo (the bar's name over a baseball diamond and crossed bats) and the motto is written on the back of the shirts. The shirts are nice, in colors you don't always see in such places: olive green or maroon as well as the normal black.

In 2001 my friend John and I were up in Cooperstown for the Induction Weekend. The night after the induction, we found ourselves watching the Cleveland-Seattle Sunday night game. This was one of the best times I've ever had as a baseball fan, as we were all there as fans, talking about the sport and watching what turned out to be a classic game.

The town of Cooperstown is the artificial birthplace of baseball. As such, it now houses the ultimate shrine to the sport.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was established in the 30's pretty much to make the sport feel good about itself. With the fiftieth anniversary of the sport on-hand, baseball's leaders wanted to create the image of baseball as an All-American sport, and not derived from English favorites cricket or "rounders." Thus when a story came about saying General Abner Doubleday first set played the game in Cooperstown, it was all the Baseball lords needed to set up the Hall on the site.

The Hall itself is one large room, with the plaques of baseball's immortals lining alcoves along the walls. They are separated by year of induction, meaning they stay where they are first put (at least until they run out of room). The room has a the feel of the apse of a church, with a high ceiling, lots of natural light and the stations way off to the sides. While the Hall is the soul of the building, the museum is the mind. The museum houses all sorts of artifacts of the sports history and of the big current events. The best way to start the Museum is actually with the present. The top floor houses records and items that were big for the last season, as well as a mock locker-room with the uniforms of all the current teams. You can check this out as you wait for a short, enjoyable slideshow to start in the Grandstand Theater. After you exit the show, you go back to the way beginnings of the sport, and walk you way through the ages, until you end up back in the present. There are side sections dedicated to the likes of The Babe, Hammerin' Hank and the Negro Leagues. Even the great umpires of yesteryear get their due.

There are whole rooms dedicated to the evolution of baseball gear and uniforms, to the record holders, and to baseball in pop culture, including music and baseball cards as well as contemporary art.

Personal favorites, from someone who goes annually, are the slideshow and the library area, where they have displays on the movies, broadcasters and writers of the sport. For a while they had a "Peanuts" display, for all those times Charlie Brown lost yet again. I would die for a moment in the library itself, to see all the books I do and don't own.

Cooperstown is a must for baseball fans. For those who live in major league cities, the town is a lovely, quiet escape from the hustle and bustle.

Situated about a half-hour drive from Cooperstown is Oneonta. Oneonta is the closest small town to Cooperstown and is home to the Oneonta Tigers baseball team and one of the more popular SUNY schools. It is also the location of the National Soccer Hall of Fame.

The Soccer Hall of Fame is a 5-10 minute ride away from downtown. It is a single building located in a large, empty field with some of New York's mountains visible in the distance. There are fittingly a few soccer pitches in this field surrounding the museum building.

The exterior of the building is a sight in itself. It is a short neo-modern building with a larger-than-life soccer ball busting through the side facing the closest highway.

Once you enter the building, you are in a large, white lobby. In contrast, once you enter the Hall itself, the room is large, but very dark. Most of the displays are on the main level with some stuff on a mezzanine level. When you enter the main hall and go to the left, there is a wall describing the creation and evolution of soccer as a game. As you walk around the room, it shows the history of U.S. soccer in chronological order, from the first U.S. Olympic and World Cup teams through the North American Soccer League of the 70s and 80s and up to the MLS and WUSA. The uniforms of all the MLS teams are on display here and there are areas dedicated to the current U.S. stars, and the Women's World Cup is on display, in honor of the U.S. victories.

The Hall of Fame itself is in a small corner of this room. There are no metal plaques like those in Cooperstown, but instead small photos and descriptions of the inductees.

The mezzanine also has some displays, but what is best on this level is a collection of hands-on areas. There are numerous virtual reality soccer games and stations where children can try to test their soccer skills up here. A small soccer pitch is also up here, big enough for about a 3-on-3 game of the world's sport.

I find this museum a major disappointment. Like its baseball counterpart, this Hall of Fame focuses on soccer as an American game. It's easy for baseball to get away with such a notion, but it's a tough pill to swallow when discussing soccer. Yet that's what they try here, focusing on the U.S. leagues and barely mentioning the likes of the English Premier League. Even the shop has a pro-U.S. feel (I collect soccer jerseys, so I was let down by this). If this is the price for calling this place the "National" Hall of Fame, I'd live well without that moniker. This Hall of Fame does a good job honoring U.S. soccer stars, but as a fan of the game as a whole, I felt cheated out of a lot of history.

Damaschke Field is an anomoly in my baseball-watching and traveling experience. Most of the parks I've been to are either large major league parks or recently built (or rennovated) minor league parks. They are comfortable and have easy access concessions stands. Damaschke Field is not like this.

Damaschke Field is a spectators park opened in 1939. It had been just a ball field until then, but in '39 the stands went up. It is possible the main structures haven't been changed since. Many of the old wooden benches and metal folding seats look like they may have never been replaced. The main grandstand structure is rickety, and the press box is a small shed placed on the roof of the stands.

Under that roof is a small number of box seats. This section is blocked off to people with general admission seats, so unlike most places, you can't walk all the way around the field unless you go behind the stands (and perhaps miss a couple of pitches). Along the foul lines is two rows of seats, then the walkway and general admission benches (old wood benches down the first base line, metal stands along the left field line).

This is possibly the smallest professional ballpark in the U.S. The capacity is listed most places as 4,500. Unfortunately for the Tigers, this is more than enough room for the current crowds. It seems about 1,500 people show up for games these days.

Concessions are limited, both for memorabilia and food. What they do sell though is cheap.

I find Damaschke Field uncomfortable, but not not without merit. The view is fabulous, looking out over the mountains of Upstate New York. Missing from the concessions is beer. A negative for some, but to me (and probably to those with families) it is a nice touch not to have to deal with rowdy drunk people.

The Tigers have the usual minor league promotions, with events such as mascot races and ball tosses on the field between innings.

These benefits don't make the park worthwhile to me. Call me spoiled, but I have trouble enjoying a game when I feel uncomfortable. I do well with rustic, but this park is just old and delpitated. I've been to some of the other small stadiums upstate and in the northeast, but this is the only one I get an eerie feeling in. Of the parks I've been to, this is the last place I would choose to go see a game.