It's been an interesting Memorial Day Weekend. I had it off last year to go to a wedding in Cleveland, but this time it's back to the norm on a holiday, anchoring from Friday through Monday. If it was a boring weekend I probably wouldn't have been happy about it. But that wasn't the case this time around, with baseball and softball sectional games all weekend, as well as the opening of a new exhibit on records at the Baseball Hall of Fame. (And I apologize to the Whitesboro baseball team, because I had to sacrifice shooting your sectional semifinal game to go to Cooperstown.)
What interested me about this event was the opportunity to meet three Hall of Famers, namely Phil Niekro, Joe Morgan, and one of the all-time greats, Cal Ripken Jr. (Now where's Mike O'Hara and Jimmy Flaherty from the movie Celtic Pride to kidnap him for being in a pennant race with the Red Sox...) I'm always impressed by the job the Baseball Hall of Fame does with these types of events. They always plan everything as perfectly as they can. Memorial Day weekend is always huge for them, because it starts up their summer season, in which their hours are extended and they get ready for their two big events, the Hall of Fame Classic next month in which former players come to Cooperstown and play a seven inning exhibition, and the Induction Ceremony in July. (This year's class includes second baseman Robby Alomar, pitcher Bert Blyleven and GM Pat Gillick.)
But back to the opening of One for the Books, which is the name of this new exhibit. It's amazing and quite frankly anyone who's a fan of baseball needs to see it in person. The displays are cool and I found myself checking them all out. (There's one that shows the average time it takes to drive from Yankee Stadium to Fenway Park, which is less than the time of the longest nine inning game in MLB history, in 2006 between the Yankees and Red Sox.) The centerpiece is what's called the Top Ten Tower, in which you can not only find the all-time and active leaders in many categories, but also who were those leaders at any point in MLB history. (Yes I did take a few minutes to check it out and I had to pry myself away from it, because I could have spent an hour there.)
The opening was pretty cool as well, because I got to interview Ripken, Niekro and Morgan. While I had the honor of being the first to speak with Cal, I didn't monopolize his time, because the media members there all did seperate interviews and had a limited time to speak with him. The Hall getting Cal to open this exhibit was perfect, given that he owns one of the most prestigious records in MLB history, consecutive games played. There's a display for it that includes the clip of him breaking Lou Gehrig's record back in 1995, which Cal said brought back the memories of that game. We also talked about the AL East, which is still the closest race so far in 2011, since he's a Baltimore guy. Going against character, I didn't tell him I'm a Red Sox fan. Weird, eh? I did divulge that to Morgan, though, and we had a few laughs about that. (I forgot to ask him about the '75 World Series, though. D'oh!) Niekro was very cool as well. It's interesting, because he's been at each of the two previous Hall of Fame Classic games, but I've never spoke with him before. (Guess there was always a bigger HOFer to grab. Sorry about that Phil!) Needless to say I'll be speaking with him again in a month when I go back to the Coop for the Classic.
In any case, I had a great time. You can check out the link to the feature I did for my Saturday night sportscast here: http://www.wktv.com/sports/Baseball-HOF-kicks-off-season-with-new-exhibit-122788204.html
Looks like I'll be working every night this week covering baseball section finals and that's a'ight with me!! We've got Ilion, Clinton, Sauquoit Valley, West Canada Valley, Cooperstown, NY Mills and Whitesboro all playing and I'm already missing Ilion-Clinton because it's this morning. But hopefully we'll get all the rest. It would've been cool to see VVS make it back to the Class A final against Whitesboro, but Bishop Ludden was the top seed and took care of business. So hopefully the Warriors will get it done again, in head coach Bill DeCoursey's last season. We'll find out Wednesday!
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