Cooperstown

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Well, we are a couple of days behind in our reporting, and we apologize, but there is just no time to sleep let alone write our blog.

We left our hotel at 7:30 a.m. and began our long (5 hour) drive to Cooperstown. By now most everyone is sleeping on the bus! Our traveling to upstate New York went well, although the bus seemed to be having a little trouble going uphill. The drive through the countryside was beautiful. We are so glad to see this part of the country. About an hour before we arrived it began to rain, but as usual by the time we were ready to go outside it was a beautiful day.

Cooperstown is a quaint town with beautiful houses, sitting on a huge lake. It is the ultimate vacation town and we wish we could have been there for five days instead of five hours. We shopped a little along the main street before going into the Hall of Fame. Had lunch in a little diner and struggled with cell phone reception.

This town, and the museum itself, is baseball nirvana. There is no way a few hours can be enough to absorb it all. The museum houses several floors of memorabilia and history. So much is packed into such a small space, and it boggles your mind to realize that most of what they have there is probably not displayed at any given time. We looked for Barry Bond's homerun ball--they are just about to display it but it is not out yet. Curt Schilling's bloody sock is on traveling exhibition now in Boston (weren't we just there?), so we missed it. The history is thick. Jill liked seeing the shovel that broke ground when Dodger Stadium was being built and the Women in Baseball exhibition. I loved seeing things like Babe Ruth's locker and all of the original gloves, uniforms, bats, etc., from so many years ago. They have a display of baseballs from every single no hitter ever pitched since 1948 (I think that's the year). The list goes on and on, it was so cool. The actual Hall is really overwhelming, with the placques of all the players who have been inducted. It is really amazing to realize how few players have made it into the Hall of Fame when you consider the number of players and the number of years baseball has seen. The 2008 induction had taken place just a week before we were there, so everything was still decorated and focused on that. We certainly got our fill of Goose Gossage in the few hours we were there!

All in all it was a fabulous experience, one that neither of us had every really thought we would have. We would love to go back some time and spend an hour in front of a case of items instead of just a few minutes. It was awesome.

We were sad we had to leave, but were plenty tired. We got back on our bus (which now had a new fuel filter) and then had to drive another 5 hours... to New Jersey. It was impossible to sleep. We finally got there, and basically crashed. Tomorrow we go to Washington, and lucky us, only have to wake up at 8:00.

(Oh ya, so we just saw Manny Ramirez in Boston and saw first hand how sick the fans are off him. Today was the trading deadline and Danny called and informed us he's now a Dodger. Weird! We just went to see the Sox play for probably the first and last time of our lives, same goes for Manny, and now he's on our team!)

The trading deadline is always an exciting day, mom should know, thats the day she married Dad. A good transaction.

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