May 17, 2007

-- The first time I visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, I was thirteen or fourteen years old. My family, for reasons unknown, decided to forego Myrtle Beach for a summer, and go north for a change. It was a hell of a lot of driving, but also one of the most memorable vacations of them all.

We took in a baseball game at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, and another at Fenway Park in Boston. When we emerged from the tunnel at Fenway, and I saw the fabled Green Monster in left field, my knees almost buckled. My emotional reaction rivaled that of the Night of the First Three-Dimensional Breast, a few years later.

I saw New York City for the first time on that trip as well. We took a tourist bus around town, and it was quite a mind-blowing affair for a hillbilly child. 

This was back in the ‘70s, remember, when New York was still a swirling sewer of derelicts, drug addicts, whores, and vomit. We walked through Times Square and a man shoved a flier into my hand with a picture of a naked woman on it, with pubic hair the size of a coonskin cap. My mother almost had a stroke.

When our bus drove through Harlem they made an announcement warning us not to take any photographs. The residents there don’t like it, the guide said, and sometimes there’s violence. Gulp. I can remember block after block of long benches, on the outskirts of some seedy “park,” filled with black guys giving us the finger and throwing beer cans in our general direction.

I also remember a massive billboard advertising A Bridge Too Far. It must’ve been five stories tall, and stretched a full city block. Oh, and we drove past the home of Phil Silvers.

And those are my main memories of NYC, circa 1977 (or whatever).

On that trip we also visited Niagara Falls. We put on funky-ass raincoats and took a boat all the way up to falls themselves. And it seems like we went behind them as well. Is that possible? Or is my brain just over-dramatizing things?

That’s when we ventured into Canada and stayed at a nasty hotel, and my Dad got uncharacteristically pissed at me and my brother. The place was really gross, with roaches in the bathroom, tables on a radical slant, and a flea market print of “Blue Boy” hanging over the beds, with one eye shot-out via some sort of firearm.

My brother and I started howling in protest and my Dad basically told us to shut the hell up, we’re staying here. There was a clear implication he believed we were acting like a couple of fancy-lads.

Dejected and hurt, we walked down to the pool and found a crowd of people screaming and pawing at the ladders. There was a turd in the water! And some kid was on the sidewalk providing the play-by-play, while the butt chunk floated past. “She’s breaking up!  She’s breaking up!!”

I’ve been pondering this question for the past thirty years: how does a turd get into a swimming pool in broad daylight, with dozens of people around? Did somebody shit their pants while swimming(!?), pull back their waistband, and simply set free the poop? It doesn’t seem plausible on any level.

Cooperstown was really small and out in the middle of nowhere, which surprised me. But it was incredibly cool. I remember they had a telephone at the Hall of Fame that you could pick up and hear Babe Ruth talking to you. It’s not there anymore, probably because it freaked people out. You know, having phone conversations with the dead and all…

After the Hall itself, we walked around town and I accidentally ripped the cover off a 1947 Boston Red Sox scorebook, inside some shop. The owner heard the ripping noise, and came running. He saw what I’d done, and said calmly, “You’re not helping me any, kid.” 

That’s all he said, and somehow it made me feel far worse than if he’d yelled for ten minutes. Mind games, man…

And at the hotel a couple of girls, cute and roughly my age, complimented me on the t-shirt I was wearing. It was standard geek-wear, and featured the cover of Sgt. Pepper. Being thirteen and a big ol’ goober, I could only manage to look at my shoes and grunt, “Yeah.”

My Dad told me they were trying to flirt, and I needed to put forth a little more effort. Thinking back, I should’ve told him it was easy for him to say. He wasn’t seven foot tall, one hundred pounds, and sporting a ludicrous haircut straight out of the American Basketball Association. He wasn't hideous.

I believe I came very close to dying of puberty, I’m not kidding. And I really appreciated the critiques of the dark, dark struggle, I really did.  

Anyway, Steve should be here soon, and we’re going on our fourth or fifth excursion to Cooperstown since I moved to Pennsylvania in 2000. After all these years it’s still one of the best places on Earth.

And I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

See ya then.

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Last updated
01/17/12 12:12 PM

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