The Day before the official induction

Bert gets officially inducted tomorrow (Sun July 24th) but today was a day to check out Cooperstown. What a neat little town -- I can see why this weekend is crazy. Just not enough space. The best way I can describe it -- imagine the State Fair but add in a small downtown area and put it on about 1/4 size (of the Minnesota State Fairgrounds) and that what you have here at Cooperstown. You can just sense the history though as the bus drove in and through the little city (population under 2,000).

The bus dropped us off about 2 blocks from the Hall of Fame museum -- we were all somewhat surprised at the 'lack of crowding' inside the museum -- time to get our tour on! Since it is Induction Weekend we assumed it would be somewhat crowded. The museum is an amazing place -- words cannot put justice to it. So much great history -- here are a few pictures to attempt the journey explanation:

The Kirby Puckett Plaque -- I loved Kirby, in fact it is a total shame what happened with him after he left baseball -- I guess some guys cannot deal with life after "sports" -- regardless I loved how he smiled, hustled, performed, and oh yea -- won a couple championships while playing baseball for the Minnesota Twins. In fact I told many of my friends if Kirby was not a first ballot Hall of Famer I was done with baseball -- he indeed was, but I look back and wonder if my statement was a little bold.....

The Harmon Killebrew Plaque -- I knew of "The Killer" as a young man growing up - he had hit the 5th most home runs in baseball history when I was "growing up".....what I didn't know is it took Harmon 4 years (yes four!) to get into the hall, thus my Kirby comment was probably a little short sighted -- how was Harmon not a first ballot Hall of Famer? Regardless of what the writers thought -- Harmon didn't do anything that wasn't worthy of 1st ballot -- I miss you Harmon. Thanks for the memories.

The Blyleven Shrine - as I like to call it, it is a collection of items from Bert to show all of what he did while in baseball. Twins, Pirates, and Rangers all shown (he did pitch for the Angels) -- what was interesting is the scorebook in the middle is one that he used in Aug 2006 while broadcasting a game -- if you look closely (well you can't see it) it says 231 days on the top right......um yep -- he keeps tracks of how many days until his birthday on his scoresheet -- Circle Me Bert -- and Bert, on induction day, you have 257 days until your birthday.

The Parade down Main Street ended the day -- here we see Paul Molitor

Roberto "Remember the" Alomar -- 2011 HOF Inductee, he was a pretty good second baseman -- he also liked to spit once in a while....

Bert was the last one on the parade -- it was fun to see him smiling and waving! Congrats Bert, we look forward to seeing you tomorrow and also listening to your induction speech -- "Are we live?"

The blog does not capture the whole day -- but I will tell you this, I was hanging out with some good friends (and even an old guy from Canada that we call Doc) and a memorable experience. Listening to Bert's induction speech in person tomorrow, that will be pretty special as well.

This camper is tired.....time for "toes up" as Curt likes to say....

--PB


~~ "You can observe a lot just by watching." - Yogi Berra ~~