A Home Of Their Own

From SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, June 12, 1989

IT'S AN UGLY LITTLE THING THAT LOOKS MORE LIKE A FOSSILIZED chaw of tobacco than a baseball. The cross seams on one side have come apart, revealing some kind of cloth stuffing that resembles dirty yarn. Hard to believe anybody saved the thing in the first place. This is the so-called Doubleday ball, supposedly used by Abner Doubleday and the boys 150 years ago and most certainly used 100 years later to foster the belief that baseball was created in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1839. � We all know by now of course, that Abner Doubleday was the man whom baseball invented, not the other way around. Historians tell us that Cooperstown has no better claim to being baseball's birthplace than Brooklyn or Hoboken, N.J., or Murray Hill in Manhattan, to name just a few sites where baseball was played in its earliest days. In 1839, the year Doubleday is alleged to have conceived the game in Cooperstown, he was a first-year cadet at West Point, confined to post.

So how can something so wrong be so right? As the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum celebrates its 50th anniversary this summer of 1989, baseball fans should give thanks to the solons of the game who had the bad sense and good taste to make Cooperstown home plate. Maybe the game didn't begin in Cooperstown, but it's nice to think that it began in some small town when some boy named Abner drew a diamond in the dirt. And after the great players have touched 'em all, they can find no warmer greeting than the one they get when they cross the plate there on the shores of Otsego Lake.

"It's something like going to heaven," Hall of Famer Charlie Gehringer (class of '49) said of his own induction. He could have been speaking of the village of Cooperstown, which is the stuff of picture postcards, or of the state of grace that comes with joining the likes of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Christy Mathewson.

Once you begin to appreciate the Hall--and even some Hall of Famers still don't--then you should go back and take another look at Cooperstown's Exhibit A, that ugly little Doubleday ball. It's not just stuffed with cloth but also with the dreams of boys and the sweat of men. Pardon the mush, but it's the perfect symbol of a game bursting at the seams with 150 years of history and lore. Out of that homely ball, which is the oldest physical evidence of the game anywhere, have sprung the thousands of other artifacts in Cooperstown. And, pardon the anthropomorphism, each one of those relics has a story to tell.

There's the resin bag that Ralph Branca used to get a grip on the ball he threw to Bobby Thomson in 1951. Here are the shoes of Shoeless Joe Jackson. The glove that Brooks Robinson used to make all those plays in the 1970 World Series. Cool Papa Bell's sunglasses, themselves the essence of cool, worn when he starred in the Negro leagues between 1922 and 1950. There's Ruth's 60th home run ball and Roger Maris's 61st home run ball. Maury Wills's 104th stolen base from 1962. The bat with which Ted Williams, in his last at bat, homered. Joe DiMaggio's locker, which the Hall later found out had also been used by Mickey Mantle.

There's Wally Pipp's glove. Orel Hershiser's uniform shirt from the 1988 World Series. (Hmmm, looks small.) The medal that catcher Moe Berg was awarded for his spy work during World War II. A huge trophy inscribed, presented to denton t. young, the king of pitchers--call it Cy Young's award. The home plate from Willie Mays's 1,950th run. A crown given to "King Carl" Hubbell and a Triple Crown for Frank Robinson. Mathewson's checkers set. Jocko Conlan's whisk broom. Ty Cobb's sliding pads. The Babe's bowling ball....

"I wonder if my silver bats are here," says Hall of Famer George Kell (class of '83). On the Saturday night of the annual Hall of Fame induction weekend each summer, the museum is reserved for the Hall of Famers and their families and friends. On this night--July 30, 1988-- Kell is looking for the two silver bats he donated to the Hall; one he got for winning the 1943 Inter-State League batting title, the other for winning the 1949 American League batting race by .0002 of a point (.3429 to .3427) over Williams. "My, this place brings back memories," says Kell. "I just suddenly recalled the time in 1946 when Connie Mack called me to his room in the Book Cadillac Hotel in Detroit to tell me he was trading me to the Tigers for Barney McCosky. 'You're going to be a great one,' Connie told me, 'but I'm trading you because I won't be able to afford to pay your salary.' I was pretty upset at the time--I was only 23--but I guess it turned out O.K. Now, where are those bats?"

Kell is looking a bit anxious when he suddenly glances down at a glass case on the second floor. "Here they are!" he exclaims. There they are, all right, long, silver teardrops to match Kell's own. "Changes your life, getting into the Hall of Fame," he says. "For the rest of my life I'll be known as Hall of Famer George Kell. And a hundred years from now my great-grandchildren will come here, and they'll think I was as good as Cobb or Ruth. Let's go down to the gallery now. I want to check to make sure I'm still here."

Kell was there, along with 199 other Hall of Famers. Some are more deserving than others, but once you walk into the Hall of Fame Gallery--the wing that holds the famous bronze plaques--you know you are in a place of worship, and you could never begrudge a man his place there. You might wish that Roger Maris, Ron Santo, etc., could be there too, but you wouldn't wish to unscrew Rabbit Maranville's plaque to make room for another, even if Maranville did hit just .258 lifetime. Besides, there's no sense in trying to read the minds of the baseball writers who vote for the Hall of Fame candidates. (In the first election, in 1936, 11 of them left Ruth off their ballots.) And there's no benefit in chastising the veterans' committee, which, in trying to undo past injustices, has perhaps relaxed the standards a bit. No, the overwhelming feeling you get in that splendid room is one of gratitude. Thanks, fellas, for filling up the afternoons and evenings of so many, for bringing them to their feet, for the memories.