heavy fog during a late night run from Citi Field to Boston. The next night, after an afternoon at Fenway Park, we headed west through Massachusetts visited with some of Jenn’s relative briefly and continued to Cooperstown, New York. We did about 15 hours of driving in a 48-hour period of time and that was plenty.
I’m glad we abandoned the original “drive everywhere” philosophy. The first five days of driving was enough for me. I was ready for some airports and TSA lines.
You never appreciate just how remotely situated the Baseball Hall of Fame is until you try to drive there in the middle of the night. And it always feels like I’m driving there at some odd hour. We actually did an all-nighter to Cal Ripken’s induction in 2007.
Cooperstown is always great. It just is. And the Library and Hall actually seem to improve every time I make the trip.
The reception and special attention that Brad Horn, Jeff Idelson and their staff gave us in Cooperstown in the early hours was simply wonderful. We had coffee, a tour of the Hall and Library early in the morning. We swabbed the mayor of Cooperstown on the steps. We swabbed Idelson right under the Luis Aparicio plaque.
8
We also toured the whole place. See our journey here:
Our experience was similar two weeks later in Kansas City on Day 21 when we toured the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
8We only spent the early morning in Cooperstown because we had to drive back to New York for Day 5 of the tour and Yankees hosting the Marlins.
It was a magical day – a lovely drive down the mountain from upstate on a summer afternoon and we wound up watching Michael Pineda take a no-hitter seven innings deep at Yankee Stadium. We also ran into the entire staff from Delete Blood Cancer, who wound up in the seats next to us in the bleachers. It was the strangest coincidence of the tour and very random in New York City and a building as cavernous as Yankee Stadium. We scalped a pair of single seats for $10 outside the giant monstrosity in The Bronx and wound up 10 feet from the same folks who administered and witnessed Jenn ringing the “Survivor Bell” at the Delete Blood Cancer office in Manhattan on Monday, when we were in New York for the Mets-Blue Jays on Day 3 of the tour.
You might want to watch this one with tissues:
Our goal for the tour was awareness. I appreciate the contribution of John Maroon in helping me create clarity for our tour last year.
One of the reasons I was so energetic and hopeful regarding the kind of difference we could make with our 30-30 MLB #GiveASpit tour was the fact that I’m linked to so many
