Hall of Fame Memories Part One

What happens when a family of die-hard Colorado Rockies fans heads to Cooperstown for Todd Helton's Hall of Fame induction? Join us for a special detour from our usual Denver Nuggets content as we share a heartwarming journey filled with baseball nostalgia, family bonding, and the unexpected beauty of northern New York. From seamless travel amidst a Microsoft outage to immersing ourselves in baseball history at the museum, this episode is packed with personal stories and treasured memories. 

Relive iconic baseball moments, from Babe Ruth's legendary status and the 1993 expansion year of the Rockies, to the thrilling 1998 home run race. We also explore unique memorabilia like the Barry Bonds ball and a hallway dedicated to baseball cards. Experience the camaraderie among fans from all backgrounds, memorable souvenirs, and standout moments from the induction day. Plus, hear interviews with family members that capture the joyous atmosphere and love for the game. This episode is a love letter to the joy and memories baseball has brought into our lives, promising an emotional and nostalgic ride for every baseball enthusiast.

Chapters

• 0:04 Celebrating Baseball Memories in Cooperstown
• 9:56 Exploring Baseball Memories at Hall
• 20:36 Baseball Celebration and Souvenirs

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

All right, everyone, welcome back to Fandom From Afar. I am going to do something a little bit different today, instead of talking about how awesome the Nuggets are and all the brilliant moves that they're making. This offseason I had a fun trip up to Cooperstown, new York, and got to see Todd Helton get inducted into the Hall of Fame, along with Jim Leland, joe Maurer and Adrian Beltre. So it was a really fun weekend and I'd like to just kind of share some of the stories from it today. So to start, just a little bit of context If you didn't listen to the episode that I did with my sister about her being the biggest Rockies fan that I know. Just a little bit of background for our family. We are all huge Rockies fans. I think she has definitely gone above and beyond and taken the mantle as the biggest, but growing up, our whole family spent a lot of time watching Rockies. We were all very excited when they came around in 1993. We started going to spring training every year around spring break shortly after that, and I know my family that still lives in Colorado. They've been going to spring training I think for 20 plus years straight and it's just a big part of their life. They enjoy watching baseball. They enjoy just the time hanging out that baseball gives you, because there is a lot of downtime and it really is really a big part of what we did growing up. And so this weekend really was a celebration, and I'm almost calling it the weekend was a love letter to my former self about how much I used to love baseball and it just brought back so many memories from when I used to watch every game and my sister and I would talk about the players all the time and there was just so much reminiscing going on with all of us this weekend that it really ended up being my favorite part. The museum and the ceremony were pretty amazing, but the time with the family and just all the stories that we brought up that we really hadn't thought about in years, I think, was really special. And so again, some background as far as how into the Rockies we were back in the day, I'd say from 1993 when the Rockies started, to about the time when I finished up college in 2003,. I would say one of our family members probably watched 90 to 95% of the games. We had them on all the time and they were just either in the background while we were hanging out or just literally sitting down for three hours at night and watching the Rockies together. It really was, looking back on it, just a special time. All that time that we spent together just was quality time. This weekend kind of reminded me of all the different things that we either saw together or spoke about during that time. And this weekend kind of reminded me of all the different things that we either saw together or spoke about during that time and you can probably tell I just I loved it.

Speaker 1: 3:12

Baseball was a big part of our life and it wasn't just watching the games. Like I mentioned, we would go to spring training. If you listen to Krista's episode, we would try and get autographs down in spring training and we continued that up in Denver as well. We would go to celebrity golf tournaments and try and meet the players. We'd go to just autograph signings at different memorabilia stores. We would do fantasy baseball together. Krista and I would play baseball video games. There was a lot of baseball going on in the Johnson household and we definitely kind of soaked it all up and it was fun just to think about some of those things that it was. It was items that we saw in the museum would remind us of it, or just just the general time that we spent together this weekend. We just kind of helped remember some just random stories from from back in the day when we were all obsessed with baseball. So it was such a good time and I'm going to kind of go over some of the details of the weekend. If you have a sport that was a big part of your family, I really recommend going to that Sports Hall of Fame and just kind of seeing the stories that will come out from your loved ones, because I was just so pleasantly surprised with the added benefit of that memory trigger and all the stories that came through.

Speaker 1: 4:35

So, like I mentioned, it was a quick weekend, but I did fly up there on Friday and that was the Friday where that was the big Microsoft outage. Now I got lucky in two different ways. I was flying up there in Southwest and apparently Southwest uses an archaic version of Windows, so they were not impacted by this big outage. So while everybody else was scrambling around looking for a new flight, I did not have that problem. Now I did forget to check in on time, so I was in the C group on Southwest and normally that means I am stuck in the middle and just have to deal with it. But I got lucky. On both my flights, even in the C group, I got a window seat. So between the outage and getting the window seats, I should have known I was in for a pretty great weekend.

Speaker 1: 5:24

We flew into Albany and family picked me up and we headed towards our Airbnb just outside of Cooperstown. Now another pleasant surprise is I was shocked at just how beautiful it is up in northern New York. I guess I was picturing more farmland, but it was really rolling hills and lots of trees and I was kind of just stunned. It's beautiful and I can only imagine, with all those trees, what it looks like in the fall and I'm sure it's gorgeous. But that was another little pleasant surprise. Is northern New York Beautiful? So we were all pretty exhausted after traveling all day.

Speaker 1: 6:00

Friday and on Saturday our plan was to go to the museum and try and get there early, because we figured there's going to be a long line with just all the baseball fans in town. We tried to get there early so that we could have the best chance of seeing as much as we possibly could at the museum and you may see a theme here for the weekend, but a pleasant surprise is it was not busy at all early in the morning. Either people had been there already and they were sleeping in that day, or everyone was at the big Little League tournament going on. We were able to just walk right in and we were able to watch the movie that they recommend. Starting out with. The movie was great. Just a bunch of clips from baseball history with some interviews with the players and it just it really gets you pumped up to see the museum because you just can't help kind of feeling a bit emotional about how much the game has meant not only to these players but to the fans and the cities that they represent. So the movie was a great start, but not having the crowd was awesome. We were able to walk around the whole second floor and the crowd definitely did come later.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Later in the afternoon it was swarming with little leaguers but it was pretty fun just to see them kind of checking out some of the history, even history from the 90s when I was growing up. These kids have no idea unless they've been checking out the videos on YouTube. They've never heard a lot of these players that I watched growing up and thought were such a big deal. So it was fun to see kind of some of the young kids in there checking out and learning more about the history of the game. We had the whole museum to ourself and were able to walk around without a problem.

Speaker 1: 7:45

And I won't go through every display that I saw, but I did want to go over a few of my favorites, kind of some things that really stuck out. As I mentioned earlier, if you like a sport, let alone love it, I really think the museums and these Hall of Fame museums are underrated. There was so many things in there to look at and they do such a good job of storytelling. So whether you're familiar with that player or with that moment or not, they tell the story and you can just really appreciate what that item or what that picture or just what that display means to the game. So, like I said, whether it's the baseball Hall of Fame, football, basketball, I definitely recommend any sports fan go and check out any or all of them. So back to some of my favorite displays.

Speaker 1: 8:36

We started out with a big display for Babe Ruth. Like I really wanted to see Babe Ruth stuff because really when you think about baseball, he's going to be one of the first players that you think of. He's just almost like a legend that you can't believe actually exists, with some of the stories that you hear whether it's him pointing to the outfield and then hitting a home run for his called shot, or just when you look at his numbers that he put up or I just it's it's crazy to think that he was actually a pitcher and a great hitter. Obviously Otani is doing that now, but just to think that Ruth was doing that back in the day, and even the story of just how the Red Sox sold him to the Yankees and that led to the curse, obviously. But just seeing the Babe Ruth stuff was really cool. Just because A you see the equipment and you compare it to what it's like in the modern day now, you just can't believe what these guys were able to do with just some of the really beat up and rough equipment that they had to use. And so it was fun to see some of his bats and cleats and just some of the awards that he's won, and they had a lot of pictures and kind of reprints of news articles that really told a great story about his career.

Speaker 1: 9:56

I was fascinated with. They had one of his uniforms on display and I always think of Babe Ruth as kind of a larger-than-life figure, like I almost picture him as what, like what Aaron judge is now, where he's just huge compared to all the other players. But really his uniform made him look like he's maybe six foot Like. He just looked like normal size, but I'm guessing it was just that hand eye coordination. He he was just built special and was able to accomplish special things. So the Babe Ruth uh display Ruth display was really cool and I just I really liked and I spent a lot of time in that one, just because it's Babe Ruth, like that's a legend.

Speaker 1: 10:38

They had one display for the year 1993. As I mentioned, that's the year that the Rockies began and it was just kind of fun to see they had a whole display for that year just because it was obviously the expansion for the Rockies and Marlins coming in. They also had a bunch of baseball movies that came out around that time, classics that I had grown up with, and they had a whole stack of VHS that I'm sure I'd watched multiple times with Krista and Sarah and it was just fun seeing those little corny baseball movies that we used to love so much. But then they also had a part of that display. In 1993 was the Bash Brothers year and for 12-year-old me who was really just getting into baseball, I thought the Bash Brothers were so cool. It was Mark McGuire and Jose Canseco out in Oakland. They just had the big muscles and hit giant home runs and they did a good job marketing them, because I remember I had the poster up in my room and just that whole 93 display was like oh, this is what my childhood looked like in 1993. And I loved it.

Speaker 1: 11:49

They also had a display for 1998, which was a big year for baseball. A lot of people say that's the year that saved baseball. After the strike, fan interest was way down and then came Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire with their home run battle. That really kind of took America by storm and I remember that year, just that was at the height of SportsCenter. So SportsCenter did a good job of always talking about the battle and checking in and having counters going and they really made it a big deal that summer of those guys seemed to hit a home run every other night and just the way that it was framed it just drew so much interest and it was just fun to look at those pictures and just think back to what a big deal I thought that was that summer and it was just so fun.

Speaker 1: 12:41

1898 display was a Barry Bonds ball that someone had bought and donated to the Hall of Fame. But before they donated it they cut an asterisk out of it and so while it is labeled a Barry Bonds ball I forget which home run significance it was, but I'm sure the buyer did not spend a small amount of money on that. But they really wanted to prove a point and they made sure that asterisk is nice and big on that ball. And so it's just interesting how all three of those guys are looked back at now with the whole steroid era and whether people should count that towards the record books and everything. But for someone that I was 16, 17 at that time just watching it, it was a big deal for me and definitely fond memories of those guys crushing home runs.

Speaker 1: 13:37

They had one room in the Hall of Fame that's just called the Room of Records and it was one of my favorites. It's just a bunch of displays for any sort of record setting performance by players, whether they're superstars or it just happened to be just one random game in their career, but it was a record setter. So, for example, there was a display with Eric Young who was a second baseman for the Rockies. They had a pair of his pants in there because he stole six bases in one game, and so just stuff like that. Or they had the bat of I believe it was Fernando Tatis, who hit two grand slams in one inning. It's just little stuff like that that just never happens. They're able to capture the story behind it and just kind of appreciate the greatness of that moment for that player who may not have really done anything extraordinary in the rest of their career, but they're in the Hall of Fame because of that moment. So I just love that stuff. I thought it was really cool.

Speaker 1: 14:41

They also had a hallway dedicated to the baseball cards and I grew up collecting cards. I've gotten into it more again recently, but just seeing some. They had some of the Holy grails, like the most rare cards you could think of, uh, probably behind inches of plexiglass, but they had some that you could see there. They had just all kind of like a timeline of you could kind of see what cards looked like back in the teens in the 1920s and then as they progressed up into the junk era of the 1990s. One of my favorite displays from that 90s section was catcher Mike Piazza. He got traded to the Marlins and then five days later got traded again. So he was only on the Marlins for five days. I think he played in a couple of games with them, but cards were being produced so fast at that time that there are over 150 different cards of Mike Piazza in a Marlins uniform. So it just shows you like that's why it's called the junk era is there was just so many cards produced during that time and I thought that was just such a perfect example. But the card hallway was really cool. They they kind of had fun with it showing how special some of these cards were. And then another section called like the years your, your mom, threw out in the garbage or something, and they even had cards in a bicycle spoke, so you could hear what it sounded like and why people did that. It was just really fun as a card collector to see that hallway.

Speaker 1: 16:16

Now they did have a display for a pitcher named Walter Johnson, and the reason why that sticks out for me is because that is my dad's name and so we've always been kind of aware of Walter Johnson. He played uh, he, he played. A hundred years ago he was. He was one of the original inductees into the hall of fame, along with guys like Babe Ruth, cy Young, like that, that, like that kind of class. So he is an all time great. But because of his name being the same as my dad's, we always kind of had an awareness of him and just appreciation, because it's just fun to kind of get attached to players for silly reasons. But James, who was on the trip with us you may remember him from the Celtics episode. He found a stat in one of the displays that said that Walter Johnson actually lost 20 games one year with a 1.9 ERA. It was just that his team could not score for him. So it shows how dominant he was and his numbers probably could have been even better if he had a better team around him. But he is the all-time leader, or when he retired I should say he was the all-time leader in shutouts and strikeouts. So he was definitely one of the top pitchers ever.

Speaker 1: 17:32

Now, speaking of reasons to attach yourself to a player, and maybe it's silly, but if it lasts it lasts. Todd Helton was the reason we were out there, and the reason Todd originally became my favorite player is I was looking up his kind of collegiate stats when I heard that he was our first round pick. I think he was our first round pick in like 95 or so but I just happened to notice that his birthday was the same exact birthday as mine and so I was like, oh well, it's meant to be's my guy, let's, let's go. And I just happened to get lucky of him becoming the greatest rocky ever. So whether it's, uh, walter johnson matching my dad's name or todd having the same birthday, sometimes it's just fun to have a silly little reason to start liking a player.

Speaker 1: 18:25

But they had a display, obviously for him and all the other inductees and it was just fun to see kind of the memorabilia that they chose for him. They had a display obviously for him and all the other inductees and it was just fun to see kind of the the memorabilia that they chose for him. They had a bat that he borrowed from one of his teammates in his very last game at Coors field that he hit a home run with. They had his silver slugger and gold glove awards. They had the glove and ball um from the iconic pose when, uh, he caught the final out when it was leading to the Rockies going to their first World Series. And then of course they had the Tennessee football helmet because he played football at Tennessee along someone named Peyton Manning. But it was just really fun to see them celebrate Todd. And then it was also fun looking around at Joe Maurer's case and Jim Leland's case and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 19:11

Part of the reason why this weekend was so great was just a growing appreciation for those other players as well, and hopefully those other fans kind of got to appreciate Todd Helton a little bit as well. So really, like I said, I'm glad we got there early and we were able to walk around so much it lived up to the hype. It was great displays. Some that I didn't really mention in detail but I thought were really fun were the women in baseball display, baseball and movies display, and then obviously the plaque room where you get to see all their actual Hall of Fame plaques that are hung up all in the room. All those are really really cool and, like I said, if you like baseball at all, I definitely recommend going. So we, since we beat the crowd.

Speaker 1: 19:56

We kind of left the museum in early afternoon and we're just kind of walking around Cooperstown and I know it's the busiest weekend of the year for them. I would almost love to go there and see what that town is like on a non-Hall of Fame inductee weekend, because it's just such a perfect little town. I would just love walking around Main Street and just kind of having that vibe of a small town that just is centered around baseball. I think it'd be beautiful. They have a really nice lake nearby that you can go hang out with and have some good food. So Cooperstown gets two thumbs up from me as a city, and also the museum, of course.

Speaker 1: 20:36

While the weekend was mostly about baseball, that also meant that all those fans were there to enjoy and celebrate baseball as well. So whether we were waiting in line for food or just kind of walking around, everyone had baseball gear on. Everyone was in such a good mood, like it wasn't like there was a rivalry that fans were going against each other. Everyone was there to celebrate the greatness of their player, and so it was just kind of fun to just start up a conversation with people and say like hey, who are you here to support and how they got into baseball and just just really everyone just enjoying the game, um, in general.

Speaker 1: 21:13

Uh, they had a great hat shop there so I of course had to buy a hat. I got the Hartford yard goats hat, which is the Rockies double a affiliate, and that's kind of going to be my, my souvenir for the trip. Until the last day I stumbled upon a Todd Helton Hall of Fame whiskey decanter, so you know I had to get that as well. So I'll have two things to remember the weekend by. So I think I'm going to break this up into two parts just so it's not such a long episode, because I do have more I want to get to from the actual induction day, and then we also have some interviews from the rest of the family of just kind of moments or displays that stuck out from them. So I appreciate you listening to my version of this story and we'll get into more in part two.