JoeSportsFan Goes to Cooperstown: A Pictorial Tour

While the obvious draw to the Baseball Hall of Fame is the celebration of the sports greatest players and records, as you roam the halls in Cooperstown, it’s tough not be sucked by the total randomness that accompanies some of the exhibits.  The various moments, stories and personalities that have shaped the sport in one fashion or another are each viewed through the unique perspective of the person standing in front of them reading the display.

Some find themselves mesmerized only by those items attached to the biggest of names, while others, for reasons unknown to them, are oddly captivated by crap like John Olerud’s ever-present helmet in the Blue Jays display…

Consider me the latter.  The following is a pictorial stroll through the Hall of Fame featuring those items that seemed relevant to JoeSportsFan audience perhaps moreso than the average paying customer. ###MORE###

Color me shocked that the Hall of Fame curators felt that a sock that was covered in dried Heinz ketchup deserved entry into such a prestigious museum, but apparently Curt Schilling talked them into it…

For obvious reasons, the exhibit centered around baseball cards held substantial appeal to this spectator. But it wasn’t until stumbling upon Marty Bystom’s 1983 Fleer card behind the glass did I swell with pride and realize that one of the Philadelphia%20Phillies">Worthless Card Collection’s own holds a spot in Cooperstown…

Disappointed as I was that there was no representation of the Chicago White Sox uniform abominations such as the butterfly collar or shorts/high socks phase, it was comforting to know that when an organization chooses to buck the uniform trends and go with something unique – say a hat that resembles an Abe Lincoln stove pipe hat with stars on it – the Hall takes note…

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Nothing is quite as striking as the poetic symmetry of catching a random mustachioed spectator in the process of twisting his handlebar mustache while standing just inches away from a portrait of Rollie Fingers’ acceptance speech…

Kudos to the artists responsible for forever memorializing one of the finest mustaches in the game’s history so generations long into the future can appreciate it.  Nailing that texture in a bronze plaque can’t be easy…

In the futuristic movie Demolition Man, Wesley Snipes’ character, in need of some weapons, heads to the museum that depicted how things were in the 20th century so he could bust out the various guns to take on Sly Stallone.   should the concept of Thunder Sticks fade away from the game of baseball down the road, I can’t help but to think that sometime in the future, someone as sinister as Simon Phoenix in Demolition Man will break them out of Cooperstown and reintroduce them to the world.  Trust me, we don’t need that…

Even when you leave the actual Hall of Fame Museum, you can’t escape baseball in Cooperstown.  And because this is JSF, you can’t escape Seinfeld references either – alas, they come together at the Cooperstown Wax Museum.

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