Our Trip to Cooperstown

Mrs Vache Folle and I went to Cooperstown on Thursday where we met one of our old friends and neighbors from Seattle. He was out visting his in-laws in Pennsylvania, but he deprived himself of their company for a couple of days to see us and to worship at the Temple of Baseball. We drove through a blizzard to get there, but the weather settled down during our two day stay.

We visited the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum on the afternoon that we arrived. This consists of a more or less chronological journey through the history of baseball ending in a literal hall where the legendary players and other particpants in baseball are memorialized. The origins of baseball are obscure, and even the BHOFAM acknowledges that the claim that it was invented by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown was a complete myth. Old time baseball looked to me to be a more leisurely game, one that you could play while getting drunk. Pitchers finsihed their games and even pitched both ends of double headers, so how hard could they have been throwing? Homers were all but non-existent before the Babe came along and made them de reigeur.

The funny thing about the BHOFAM is that it consists almost entirely of baseballs, bats, gloves and photos. And yet each is more fascinating than the next. There was THE VERY BALL that Roger Maris hit to break the Babe's record. There was THE VERY BAT that slugger so and so used for his 3,000th hot, Ohmigawd!

I learned a lot. Did you know that the Pittsburgh Pirates were known, for a season, as the Pittsburgh Innocents? That the Yankees were the Baltimore Orioles before they were the New York Highlanders? That there was a Negro League player whose nickname was "Cum"? All this and more awaits the visitor to the BHOFAM at Cooperstown.

And if you want baseball related souvenirs, there are plenty of folks on Main Street who would love to sell them to you. There are also some pretty good restaurants.

But Cooperstown isn't just about baseball. There's also the Farming Museum and the James Fenimore Cooper Art Museum, both of which are on my must do list for our next pilgrimage to the Leatherstocking Region, as it is apparently known. There is also the Cooperstown Beverage Trail which consists of a cider house, two breweries, and a winery. The cider house was closed for the season, but we were able to take in a tour and tasting at the Ommegang brewery. Ommegang is devoted to Belgian style ales which are quite delicious but which are, at least to me, a potent soporific. We didn't get to the other stops on the beverage trail. We bought a mixed case of 750 ml bottles because we enjoyed the tasting so much. One ale had been aged in the Howe caverns, and you could really tell the difference between the cave aged stuff and the same product that was not cave aged.

We drove home through the Catskills on Route 28 and settled in to our cozy cabin and a couple of bottles of good ale each with a dog for company.