Cooperstown moments

When I was in my twenties I took a job in North Jersey. The first spring I lived there I made my way to Cooperstown, a place I had never been. It was early enough in the season that I still had to drive through snow as I approached the Catskills.

I got there on Friday afternoon and went directly to the Hall of Fame. It was deserted, I only saw two other visitors the whole time I was there. I went back on Saturday morning and, sure enough, deserted except for those same two guys.

Saturday afternoon and I was dressed to go for a run when I bumped into those same two guys. We were all staying at the same hotel. They said they were going to a bar for lunch and to catch the opening Saturday Game of the Week. At the time I was a hard-core runner but not enough to refuse the offer of beer and baseball.

As we sat there shooting the breeze and watching the game a bunch of people from the Hall of Fame walked in. We must’ve stumbled onto their after-work watering hole. We started at separate tables but at some point we just merged into one large group. It got kind of loud until about the seventh inning when we realized the game was a no-hitter.

So that’s my first trip to Cooperstown – spending Saturday afternoon drinking beer, talking baseball and high-fiving with five people I didn’t know that morning. And watching Jack Morris throw an early season no-hitter for the eventual 1984 world champion Tigers. Still the only no-hitter I’ve ever watched beginning to end.

Jack Morris finished with a 248-186 record, famous for his Series winning ten inning shutout for the Twins in 1991. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2018.

A few years later into that same job and we had four tickets to a Yankees’ game. I was driving a friend over to the Bronx to meet up with our other two friends when we hit a hellacious traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge. So he started telling me a story.

As a kid he was a prodigious autograph seeker. One strategy he used was to write to old time ballplayers, ask for an autograph and include a self-addressed stamped envelope. He did that for Yankee great Waite Hoyt and got back a gracious reply complementing him on his courtesy. He wrote Waite back thanking him for the autograph. Eventually that started a pen-pal relationship, with Waite assuming the pseudo-grandfather role.

The next year Waite Hoyt was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee. Waite had a couple of children but their relationships were rocky and they were currently estranged. So he asked my friend to attend the ceremony instead. So his mother escorted him to induction ceremony that summer.

And that’s how my friend made it to Cooperstown and got the autographs of every surviving HOF player in attendance.

Waite Hoyt finished his career with 237 wins, and was the top pitcher for the famous Yankee teams of the 20’s. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1969.

Many years later I had a different job that entailed a lot of travel. One of the serendipities of that job was when, through circumstances outside of your control, an afternoon schedule freed up and you could spend some time exploring whatever city you were in.

This happened to me once in Kansas City so I made my way to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. Great museum with tons of interesting artifacts. As I was walking out (exit through the gift shop, of course), I bumped into Buck O’Neil. By that time he was pretty famous thanks to Ken Burns’ PBS documentary. I didn’t realize it at the time but he was often there; I just assumed I got lucky.

I just expecting a quick photo-op and a handshake but we started talking and he just kept talking. I made my way to the exit trying not to be rude. In passing I mentioned I liked the Homestead Grays (I liked their felt grey hats and Josh Gibson). So he started telling me all about Josh Gibson, his career and tragic early death.

We kept talking and I kept walking, thinking I was monopolizing his time. Eventually we made it outside and I realized I was standing in the Kansas City sun, talking baseball history with living baseball history!

Buck O’Neil was a first baseman in the Negro American league, became the first African-American coach in major league baseball. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2021 (actually, yesterday as I write this!)