A ball at the hall

Everything feels grand on a father-son road trip to the shrine of the national game

June 18, 2006|Jospeh P. Kahn, Globe Staff

COOPERSTOWN -- My father and I never visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum together, notwithstanding our mutual love for the game and my having grown up 30 miles north of Yankee Stadium, along the base path from the Bronx to Cooperstown.

Why we never did, I'm not sure. My dad took me to many ballgames and once got me into the Yankees dugout, where I sat on Casey Stengel's lap and shook Yogi Berra's hand. On a family road trip in 1960, he took me to a Los Angeles Dodgers-San Francisco Giants game where I saw my all-time hero, Willie Mays , the ``Say Hey Kid, " crack one of his 660 career homers. Perhaps Dad figured these brushes with baseball immortality would suffice. I cannot say I disagree.

My 5- year - old son , Charlie, however, who is every inch the fan I was 50 years ago, and more, would challenge that assumption . Obsessive is not too strong a term to describe Charlie's attraction to baseball, whether it be practicing it, watching it, playing computer versions of it, or discussing its numbers and nuances.

He used to watch ``Rugrats" every morning. Now, it's ESPN's ``SportsCenter." He knows Manny, Papi, Trot, and Schill, of course, but also Albert Pujols , Ken Griffey Jr. , Eric Gagne , and Bobby Abreu . Last winter, given the choice between a movie at the mall and a spring training game on the radio, he stayed home and listened to three hours of Joe Castiglione and Jerry Trupiano.

Was Theo Epstein like that in preschool? I sometimes wonder.

Months ago, I began plotting a father-son trip to the Hall -- not because Charlie had reached the right age, but because I had. My friend David Morse and his sons Josh, 10, and Ricky, 5, were invited along on the theory that two dads, three kids, two adjoining motel rooms, and one minivan added up to more potential fun. Early one Saturday morning, the five of us packed baseball-themed movies and a bagful of baseball equipment and left on a two-day excursion to hardball nirvana.

It turned out to be a full-immersion baseball weekend, all right. Only in ways unanticipated and unscripted, making the experience even more faithful to the game -- say hey, indeed -- that inspired the phrase ``out of left field."

Cooperstown was in preseason mode when we arrived. Many attractions don't rev up before mid-May, but we were not complaining. If anything, Cooperstown -- its main street lined with baseball-themed curio shops and eateries -- seemed more accessible without the bustle.

At first, Charlie showed no desire to see the Hall itself. He'd been sitting in a car for five hours and, like any rational 5-year - old, wanted to play. So while the Morses went ahead, we retrieved our mitts and played catch for 20 minutes on a lawn near the museum. Once inside, Charlie stared at two life-size statues in the lobby.