#131. Cooperstown (Sunday, March 16, 2025)

What was your best day…of risking your life unnecessarily?

For someone who had loudly claimed for most of my life to be “the biggest baseball fan I knew” and lived only a four-hour drive away, I certainly waited way too long—nearly three decades after I watched my first full game, and eight months before my last (#6)—to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The main problem? Cooperstown, the village of less than two thousand people where it’s located, is literally in the middle of nowhere. The only reasonable way to get there is by driving. which was not ideal for me, given my lack of “driving sense” (#55), and the fact that I never owned a car or driven with any regularity.

Well, amid a rather emotionally volatile six-month span in early 2025 (#96), I spontaneously decided that this would be the weekend I faced my fears (and incompetence) and made that long-overude solo trip

And the drive there wasn’t so bad; partly because the route was mostly sparse, medium-speed regional roads from Ottawa to Cooperstown. Amid the dreary March weather, the route felt uniquely serene: like I was seeing a part of the continent I’d never seen before and would never have occasion to again. My only minor panic came the two or three times I spotted an Amish horse-drawn buggy ahead of me, going half my speed and a little too close for comfort. (They oddly blend in with the scenery.)

I arrived in Cooperstown in mid-afternoon. The village is quaint and 19th century-esque: one main street with the Hall of Fame, baseball memorabilia stores, and restaurants, surrounded by hotels that each look like a Victorian-era bed-and-breakfast mansion.

I spent the rest of Saturday exploring the shops, which carried some legit baseball merchandise. Between the vintage unopened trading card boxes and signed jerseys of pretty much every player of significance, I was close to making two notable purchases:

A baseball that was signed by Johnny Vander Meer, the only pitcher to ever throw no-hitters in consecutive starts, with the two 1938 dates written on the ball. Initially, I thought it was one of the balls he had actually thrown in one of the no-hitters. Which made the $150 USD price tag nothing. But some quick research on my phone showed that not only was it a random signed ball, I could’ve just bought it online for the same price. Lame.
At the specialty baseball cap store, I already had a purchase in mind. For a long time, I had entertained the idea of buying a cap for all thirty MLB teams, and, each day for the rest of my life, wearing the cap of the team that had the most “successful” day (by my own objective metrics). While no online retailer offered a bulk deal, the shopkeeper here—who was only mildly alarmed at my request¹—was willing to cut me a package deal of 20 percent off for all thirty caps. And I likely would’ve taken it… except, right before buying, I recalled the ongoing U.S.-Canada tariff war and the fact that I’d have to pay a 50 percent charge on this glorious spectrum of headwear I’d be bringing back.

At night, with all the shops closing early², there was only place to go. Doubleday Field: the small baseball diamond right next to the Hall, most famous as the setting for the credits scene of A League of Their Own (the most recent of my “big emotional movies”, #60). Surprisingly, the gate was open and I could just walk in and sit in the bleachers. And so, that’s what I did—sit there for two hours in the cold wind, staring at the diamond and the starlit sky, pondering life in the quiet, uninterrupted way this place deserved.

On Sunday, I visited the Hall of Fame, taking my time with every historical artifact in the museum³. Most special was the Hall itself: a separate chamber, sealed away from everything else, displaying plaques of each of the 351 inductees (which I obviously read one-by-one). The whole chamber had this pristine, silent air—like you had unironically ascended to heaven with all those (very poorly sculpted, in many cases) faces of those baseball legends staring back at you.

Thankfully, the drive back did not ruin the experience. I was even more cautious on the way back, and I needed to be. Because halfway through, it started pouring. Combine that with my baseline apprehension, the already mediocre visibility of a March late afternoon amid barren trees and gray roads, and another handful of Amish buggies popping up when I least expected them, and the next hour should’ve been one of the most nerve-wracking in my adult life. But somehow, like in #55, it all kind of blurred together—into the simple instinct of navigating through this rainstorm and whatever else appeared in front of me.

Yes, I made it back to Ottawa early Sunday evening in one piece. And as I parked in the Enterprise parking spot, almost hugged the black Honda Venue that had been my dearest companion for those eight hours, dumped the keys, and breathed one of my deepest ghs of relief in a while, I knew that, as successful as it all was, nothing about this two-day weekend journey was going to be replicated.

I had proven that I could safely handle an extended road trip by myself, in a foreign land (relatively speaking), and I never needed to do it again. Plus, I had finally visited the place at the center of my deepest sports fandom. The glaring bucket list item closed, only eight short months before it stopped mattering entirely.

Apparently he gets it often from school groups who visit, though usually the package is for “any” 20-30 baseball caps, not the one-of-each package that only seriously baseball-obsessed (and generally weird) individuals would want.
The only place open late was a whiskey distillery, where I did an extensive tasting of all their baseball-themed spirits. I ended up picking up a “Spitball” cinnamon whiskey, whose 50 percent duty the border guard generously waived.
Notably, the bats used for Joe Carter’s World Series-winning home run in 1993 and the walk-offs in Game 7 of the 1997 (#97) and 2001 World Series.