The Magical Event That is the Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Weekend
By Chris Ryan
Cooperstown, NY- This place is one of the most magical places on earth. Time stops when you get off I-88 and drive through the rolling hills and farms to this quintissential American town. Any trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame is sure to spark memories, reflection and learning, but one weekend each year it becomes a living history museum.
This year, I brought my 6-year-old son Liam for this work-cation. We were discussing Goose Gossage, whom he found fascinating in part due to his name and also because of his sweet ‘stache. He asked me how many teams Goose played for. I could only name a few, so I took out my phone to help me tell him the rest.
He had a better idea, “Why don’t we ask him?”
Normally, asking a Baseball Hall of Famer this type of thing would be out of the question, but there he was, right out front of the CVS on Main Street signing autographs, chatting and taking pictures with Juan Marichal and Rollie Fingers sitting to his right.
“You look like a young Pete Rose,” said Gossage to Liam. “I mean that in a good way!!”
Goose would then lament the state of the game of baseball, “The owners didn’t care about player safety when I was making $15,000 a year.”
Phillies legend Mike Schmidt took pleasure in noting how he used to laugh when the old timers would talk about how hard they had it and now he finds himself and contemporaries like Gossage doing the same thing.
Fingers said basically got his fill of baseball during his playing career and barely follows the game today, “I had the worst seat in the house for 20 years (the bullpen).”
New Hampshire’s lone entrant in the Hall is Charlestown’s Carlton Fisk, “This is the highlight of my summer, probably even the highlight of my year.”
Fisk, 68, was especially impressed with new inductee Mike Piazza’s ability to put up MVP type offensive numbers while catching, “It’s amazing.”
This year’s enshrinement ceremony of Piazza and Ken Griffey Jr. drew a crowd of 50,000 people to the ceremony.
On Friday, Gosasge, Ozzie Smith, John Smoltz and Craig Biggio participated in a clinic for fans on a field that looked straight out of “Field of Dreams” including corn fields beyond the outfield fence.
The weekend also draws non-Hall of Famers looking to make a couple bucks signing autographs from Denny McClain, who had arguably the steepest falls in baseball history from winning two AL Cy Young Awards and 31 games in ’68 to suspension from baseball due to involvement in gambling to spending six-years in jail on multiple felony charges. You could also find Pete Rose, still banned from being enshrined in the Hall of Fame, signing autographs a couple doors down on Main Street.
It’s a bizarre experience, players you hadn’t thought about since your childhood like Yankees third baseman Charlie Hayes or members of tbe 1969 New York Mets right there in front of you.
Baseball may not have been invented in Cooperstown, but thank the baseball gods they picked it to house their Hall of Fane.
