Today Drake fulfilled a lifelong wish:  He got to see the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Believe me, it's not exactly easy to get to this place.  Cooperstown, New York (population 1800) is in the middle of nowhere, otherwise called the Mohawk Valley.  It's smack dab in the middle of dairy farm country.  We left Franconia yesterday and drove and drove and drove to get here.  We finally reached the exit on the Interstate, and THEN we drove another 40 minutes.  Cooperstown in a quaint little town filled with architecture that goes all the way back to the 18th century.   It's actually named not for James Fenimore Cooper, but rather for his father.

The entire downtown area (location of the Baseball Hall of Fame) is filled with souvenir shops, baseball card shops, equipment shops, buy a bat shops, a wax museum, and little restaurants and cafes.  It's surrounded with motels, hotel, inns, and  bed/breakfast mansions.  No wonder!  At peak times of the year thousands of people visit.  Inductee weekend can see 80,000 visitors.  (Can you imagine a town of 1800 hosting 80,000 people?)

We visited at one of the most uncrowded times; only in January are there fewer visitors - can you say 'snow'.  Instead of thousands of people thronging the museum, there were literally less than 10 people visiting today.  We got to see every exhibit, take photographs and look at everything completely unimpeded.  I asked Drake for his impressions about the Hall of Fame, and the verb he used was "surprised".  His expectation was that the building would be 'old' (it wasn't), and that it would be jam packed with glass cases full of baseball stuff.  Instead, we saw an open, airy space on 3 floors, and an exhibit policy that reflected the credo that 'less is more'. 

Some highlights:   First and foremost was the plaque gallery - individual  bronze plaques with a bas relief sculpture of the inductee's head (wearing the baseball team cap the inductee chose) together with a short recitation of their accomplishments.   Additionally, I loved the case of World Series 'rings'.  The 19th century equipment display was fascinating.  The statistical part of the game was handled in an interesting way.  Drake really enjoyed being in a first class museum dedicated to his greatest interest:  baseball.  As he put it, "This place makes baseball seem important because the museum is of such high quality."  We marveled over some things, learned some things, and saw more 'art' that I expected.

This was a supremely fun day.  I took a bunch of photos (of course), and hope you can get a sense of this place from the pictures.

https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2011CooperstownBaseballHallOfFame?authkey=Gv1sRgCK7fh7uknZPMnwE