A Hall of Fame Tour Like No Other!
Here's what I think is the coolest thing you can see in Cooperstown for each MLB team.
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.—Hey, hey, check out the dateline. I’m here in Cooperstown, and it’s cool and drizzly and many of the leaves have fallen. You can feel winter coming.
But here’s what is out front:
Yes, the World Series must be upon us.
Today, we’ll give you what I think is a very, very cool and different kind of tour of the Hall of Fame! I think this will be a lot of fun.
Let me get the announcements out of the way.
Announcement 1: This afternoon, I’ll be posting a World Series podcast with Molly Knight! In case you missed it, Mike and I did a World Series PosCast earlier this week with super-special guest star Jason Benetti!
Announcement 2: My WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL tour picks up again in earnest in early November. I’ll catch you up on the whole schedule over the next few days, but today I want to tell you about my return to Thunder Road Books in Spring Lake, N.J., on Nov. 8. I love Thunder Road, one of my favorite bookstores anywhere, and this one’s going to be a real blast—I’m doing the event with Basil Iwanyk, who owns Thunder Road Books, but you might know him as the founder of Thunder Road Films, which, among other things, produced the “John Wick” movies.
So… yeah!
Announcement 3 is not actually an announcement but something I wanted to pass along. In Charlotte, we have a grandmaster named Daniel Naroditsky. I don’t know Daniel too well, but I have met him a couple of times, and I watch quite a bit of his chess content on YouTube—he’s a good guy, a good teacher, a great player, a Golden State Warriors fan going back… and he’s apparently having his reputation trashed by a loose cannon named Vladimir Kramnik, who was once the World Chess Champion.
I certainly don’t claim to understand all the details of Kramnik’s looney tunes accusations, but best I can tell Kramnik has decided it is his mission in life to eradicate cheating at the highest level of chess. This could be a noble cause, I suppose, if done right, but Kramnik has chosen instead to go full Joe McCarthy and haphazardly and sloppily accuse anyone and everyone of cheating based on whatever way his mind happens to go. And, being a former World Champion, these accusations carry weight. He has come after lots of players, and now his witch hunt is acutely focused on who is most definitely NOT a cheater.
Daniel can defend himself, of course, and has been, and others, like one of the best players in the world, Hikaru Nikamura, have defended him… but if this interests you at all, former chess organizer Grant Oen has put together an open letter of support for Daniel. You can sign it by emailing Grant or by direct messaging him on Twitterex.
Now, let’s go to the Hall of Fame.
I want to start off with this not-very-good photograph I took while getting a few minutes in the basement archives. Here’s the reason: In this frame, you can see a whole lot of baseball history.
On the left, hanging, that’s Minnie Miñoso’s White Sox jersey.
In the center, those are Mike Trout’s cleats—which still have the dirt on them.
The black bat is Ichiro’s… I can’t remember if this was his 3,000th-hit bat or some other important bat. But it is important.
On the far, front right, you can see like a quarter of a baseball. That’s the ball Clayton Kershaw finished off his no-hitter with.
The other ball was pitched for 19 innings by a man named Asa Hutchinson—NOT the Asa Hutchinson who was Governor of Arkansas, but maybe a relation?—in a game back in the 1860s.
The little piece of red you see above that ball is the Washington Nationals cap Max Scherzer wore when he struck out 20 batters in 2016 against the Tigers. Fun fact from that game: Scherzer struck out every Tigers starter at least once EXCEPT for Victor Martinez, who went 3-for-4. I love stuff like that. It’s like Victor was thinking: “What’s the big deal here, guys?”
And then, behind the table, you see all those boxes—those are uniform parts (mostly pants). So there you likely have Ken Griffey Jr. jersey pants, Lefty Grove jersey pants, Pedro Guerrero jersey pants, etc.
There’s no great way to display pants, the Hall of Fame has found.
Here’s why I show you that photo: All those are things that they are currently NOT displaying in the Hall of Fame. Down in that basement, they have thousands and thousands of the coolest things that there is NO ROOM FOR in the Hall of Fame. Check out these four bat handles that are in a closet filled with baseball bats.
Do you know what those handles are? You might be able to tell from the one on the left—you see the signature, right? That’s Barry Bonds’ signature. These are all Barry Bonds' bats; each one delivered a historic hit. There’s a whole history there in four bats, and the Hall of Fame has no room to display them.
That’s the wonder of this place. There’s just so much stuff.
So, what should you do? Well, JoeBlogs is always here for you! I’m going to tell you the coolest thing you can see at the Hall of Fame for each team. Well, let me say it more accurately: I’m going to tell you what I think is the coolest thing you can see at the Hall of Fame for each team. Your mileage may vary. In that spirit, I’ll mention another option or two (or five) for each team as well.
Before we start, I do have to tell you a quick story about longtime Hall of Fame