The Disneyland of Baseball

Jens' baseball team traveled to Cooperstown, New York last week for a baseball tournament. They spent the first 2 days in Manhattan just sight seeing as much as they could. Then they drove 4 hours upstate to Cooperstown. They got all checked into their dorms and got ready for some baseball.

This park is so neat! It really reminded me of Disneyland -- in a baseball sort of way. They had music playing throughout the park. Songs such as "Take Me Out to the Ballgame". They had little sweeper men just walking around with a broom and a dustpan, just sweeping the walk ways. Sweeping anything and everything. Trash, leaves, etc. The whole park is decorated in red, white, and blues. All the flowers are red and white and there are red/white/blue flags all over. There are 22 fields and all 22 each have their own American Flag, plus the Cooperstown flag and other flags in them. There are 8 foot dark green fences surrounding each field as well.

Opening ceremonies. Cooperstown has teams from all over the country and Canada play each week during the months of June, July and August. The week we were there, there were 102 teams playing. All the boys are given 2 hats, 2 jerseys, and 2 pairs of socks. One in red, one in blue. They wear them all week and they have to wear their pants to the knee.

Opening ceremonies parade.

Jensy at bat.

Riley pitching.

Jens making a catch to get this kid out at 1st base.

Jens at 1st base and Jaren pitching.

It was a really cool, rainy week. We had 2 full games get completely rained out. We had a couple other games that we had to postpone because of the rain. Because of the magnitude of teams and only one week to play, they just have you play when you can. So one of the games that we had to stop in the middle of because of the rain we ended up finishing later that night, or rather the next morning. We started playing at 12:30am. Teams played until 4:07am that morning making up the games. Then we were back to play again at 8:30am. It was crazy but soo sooo much fun!

Tyus throwing in from the outfield.

Jens hit a home run over the fence and out of the park. I started to cry. I was so happy for him. He had a smile from ear to ear as he ran around the bases.

The boys shopping in town. I would compare the size of Cooperstown to maybe Springville. Like Main Street in Springville. Even smaller probably, but a really pretty little place.

Hall of Fame.

I could have spent HOURS in this building. It was so neat! If you ever get a chance to go to upstate New York and you are close to Albany at all, Make the 1 1/2 hour drive and go to see this place.

The Hall of Fame is a 3 story building completely full of everything baseball. They baseball cards from the 1800's. They have Babe Ruth's uniform, tons of Hank Aaron stuff, Curt Shilling's bloody sock, tons of Hall of Fame rings, girl baseball outfits - remember the movie "A League of Their Own"? You name they have it.

This is a book that Babe Ruth signed for his nurse the night before he died.

This is Lou Gehrig's locker.

We (6 of us parents) rented a double wide and a single wide trailer to stay in! We had so much fun together. We stayed about 10 minutes away from the park in a place called Milford. I would compare this town to somewhere like Benjamin! We saw lots of run down houses that looked like this.

And lots of lovely houses that looked like these.

And TONS AND TONS of barns. Everywhere you looked, there was a barn. Big, beautiful barns with ivy growing up them.

And lots of corn and sunflower fields. It was a great trip. One that I hope these boys cherish for the rest of their lives. If you are interested in seeing more pictures of the trip, you can link over to the baseball blog. I have about 50 pictures of the trip on there. The address is www.diamonddawgsbaseball.com