Tuesday, August 25

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – While winding up Route 28 into Cooperstown on a day that seemed conjured from a Norman Rockwell painting, a thought crossed my mind. 

What took me so long?

I’ve been a baseball fan since Bill Schroeder was a hotshot prospect, and I’ve covered the sport for MLB.com for 25 years. Yet I’d never been to the National Baseball Hall of Fame until Monday, when I finally found my way to the shores of Otsego Lake on a stop between the Little League Classic in Williamsport, Pa., and the Brewers’ next series at Citi Field against the Mets. 

So what took so long? When Robin Yount was inducted into Cooperstown in a terrific 1999 class that included Nolan Ryan and George Brett, I was a Brewers intern. I didn’t make the cut for the traveling party. When Bob Uecker won the Ford C. Frick Award for excellence in baseball broadcasting in 2003 and Paul Molitor went in wearing a Brewers cap in ‘04, MLB.com’s coverage was handled by our esteemed national columnist, Michael Bauman, whom I used to read every day in the Green Sheet before I had the privilege of working alongside him. For former commissioner and Brewers owner Bud Selig’s induction in 2017, another of our wonderful columnists, Richard Justice, leaned on their decades as friends to capture the day beautifully.

But even though I’ve never been, I did have some strings to pull. The Hall of Fame’s endlessly enthusiastic president, Josh Rawitch, covered the Dodgers in 2001 and D-backs in ‘02 as one of MLB.com’s original beat writers. In ‘21, he put the rest of us to shame when he landed the job of a lifetime in Cooperstown, meaning he gets to walk through a white door marked “Hall of Fame Offices” into a baseball fan’s dream.

And there’s nothing Josh enjoys more than showing other baseball fans the treasures behind those iconic brick walls. 

“Every day, something happens that’s like, ‘Wow,’” he said. “It’s still crazy how often I’ll be sitting there and look at my phone, and, oh, Sandy Koufax is calling. ‘Hi, Sandy.’”

That’s everyday life in Cooperstown, where he walks to work and there’s literally a sign in his front yard with an arrow pointing to the Hall of Fame. 

When I arrived on Monday, I got to meet my tour guides for the day, Hall of Fame staffers Jon Shestakofsky, Craig Muder and Sue MacKay, along with the countless docents who help fans navigate the more than 50,000 square feet of exhibits. It’s a lot of ground to cover, especially when you know someone with keys to the vault downstairs. 

All told, the Hall of Fame has possession of more than 40,000 three-dimensional artifacts, from bats and baseballs to helmets and uniforms, and priceless art that includes not only Rockwell’s “Game Called Because of Rain (Tough Call),” which is on display for the public, but the drawing he drew while planning the work, which is stored downstairs. You know the one: three umpires looking up at the sky, one of them with a hand extended to catch a raindrop.

That’s on top of the hundreds of thousands of documents and baseball cards in the Hall’s possession, each meticulously verified and catalogued by category, year and order in which it found its way to Cooperstown. Only 10% are on display at any given time. The rest are stored downstairs in one of the Hall of Fame’s two unmarked, temperature- and humidity-controlled archives.

You can enter only if you:

1. Are very lucky

2. Know someone

3. Make a hefty donation to the Hall
4. Put on a pair of rubber gloves 

It’s crazy what you’ll find down there. There’s a baseball labeled B-94.49, the 94th item received in 1949. It’s a baseball purportedly signed by the 1927 Yankees, only the Hall of Fame’s three full-time archivists (they’re seeking a fourth, if you’re considering career change) have confirmed only Babe Ruth’s signature. The rest appear to have been scribbled by the same person.

Somewhere in the same room but on the opposite end of the “priceless” spectrum is a box labeled B-312.2004. The 312th item donated in 2004 is a prop glove from the Bernie Mac film “Mr. 3000,” which, let’s be honest, isn’t a classic. But it was filmed at Miller Park, so it resides alongside the much more memorable “Major League,” which was filmed at County Stadium and is among Milwaukee’s favorite baseball films. 

Then there’s an item labeled B-8-38a, making it the eighth artifact received by the Hall of Fame in 1938. The Hall of Fame didn’t even open until 1939, but a memorabilia enthusiast toured the country, Rawitch said, to ask ballplayers if they had any cool stuff. That’s how the collection started.

This one is the uniform from Ty freakin’ Cobb’s 4,000th hit. It’s draped on a shopping mall-style mannequin in this 62-degree room, with Cobb’s name embroidered on the collar. 

“I try to not lose sight of the fact that this is insane,” Rawitch said. 

Tell me about it. We’re about four steps into the main archive room when he picks up a bat and hands it to me. It’s the bat Ted Williams carried to home plate for the final at-bat of his Hall of Fame career and used to hit a home run, one of the iconic moments in the history of baseball. There’s pine tar all over it.

It’s in my (gloved) hands, and I’m smiling like an idiot.

“Wait until you see the other bats over there,” Rawitch says. “This is one of hundreds and hundreds of the most unbelievable bats in this room.”

It’s not just bats. There’s row after row after row of these treasures, all labeled by category. A box of Hank Aaron memorabilia stacked on top of a box of Grover Cleveland Alexander memorabilia, on top of Dick Allen and Roberto Alomar Jr. and Walter Alston. Down on the other end of the room you find Robin Yount and Carl Yastrzemski. For some reason, that’s a particularly satisfying pairing.

Speaking of Yount, the Hall of Fame knew I was coming, so it pulled a couple of items it thought I might like. The bat Paul Molitor used to set a World Series record with five hits in Game 1 in 1982. And the bat Yount used to hit an opposite-field single off Cleveland’s Jose Mesa on Sept. 9, 1992. Yount’s 3,000th hit cemented his place in Cooperstown, if there was any doubt. 

I’d written about that hit. I’d had the pleasure of talking to Yount about it. For a kid who grew up in New Berlin, Wis., idolizing Molitor and Yount, the conversations themselves were priceless.

Now I had those bats in my hands. 

You never know who’ll call. The other day, the Diamondbacks called about the 25th anniversary of Luis Gonzalez’s walk-off bloop single to win the 2001 World Series. Gonzalez was adamant that he’d broken that bat. A club official wasn’t sure. So they called the Hall of Fame.

“So I went and had to show him, ‘Yeah, it’s cracked,’” Rawitch said. “People call all the time looking for that info, and what’s cool is that once something gets here, it never gets altered. If it’s a uniform, we’ll keep the jersey dirty. If there’s dirt on the spikes, it stays there.”

One of the challenges of the job is to make sure that these treasures don’t just live in the basement. Rawitch and his staff work endlessly to keep the public exhibits alive, and to procure artifacts as historic events occur. About 40-50 times per season, they contact teams to request donations. When Rawitch was in Las Vegas earlier this year to watch the Brewers and Athletics play the first regular-season games in Sin City in 30 years, he returned to Cooperstown with a locker nameplate from A’s pitcher Jeffrey Springs as well as the first-pitch baseball. Those items are in a separate vault waiting to be catalogued.

It’s history happening in real time.

Upstairs, there’s plenty more to send a Milwaukee baseball fan down memory lane. Only two players have their own exhibits in Cooperstown, Ruth and Aaron, and Aaron’s wing has items from bricks and a pillar from his boyhood home to the baseball from his 2,210th RBI, besting Ruth’s all-time record. Aaron once called that the record he was most proud of.

There’s a cap from Corbin Burnes’ 10 straight strikeouts against the Cubs in August 2021, matching the all-time record, and a cap from Jacob Misiorowski beginning his career with 11 consecutive hitless innings, another record. A bat from Molitor’s 39-game hitting streak. The baseball from the first pitch in Brewers history against the California Angels at County Stadium on April 7, 1970. And even farther in the past, the earliest existing baseball uniform, a cap, jersey and belt from all the way back in 1866. It’s from the Baraboo Base Ball Club of Baraboo, Wis. 

And then you get to the plaque room. It’s like the Grand Canyon. If you’ve seen pictures, you think you know what to expect. Then you start reading plaques and want to learn more.

Yount’s middle initial was “R”? Yes, his official record lists Robin R. Yount, with no middle name. Aaron’s Hall of Fame plaque includes a reference to a record for “long hits”? Yes, that’s how the Hall of Fame referenced his record 1,477 extra-base hits. 

I’ve got to come back here more often.

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