February 6, 1826: “The Last of the Mohicans” Is Published

Daniel Day-Lewis in the 1992 film version

February 6, 1826, 200 years ago: The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper is published. It has been called the 1st great American novel.

It's also been called the 1st Western novel, as what we now call Western New York was, in a way, America's first "frontier."

James Fenimore Cooper was born on September 15, 1789 in Burlington, New Jersey, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. But it would be near the source of the Delaware River, at Lake Otsego in Central New York, where his family would settle. Named for his father, Judge and eventual Congressman William Cooper, it became "Cooperstown."

James was admitted to Yale University at the age of 13, and expelled at 16 for a string of pranks. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy, served 2 years, and married Susan de Lancey, having a son and a daughter. In 1820, he published his first novel, Precaution. In 1823, with The Pioneers, he began what became known as The Leatherstocking Tales, which led to Cooperstown's section of New York becoming known as "Leatherstocking Country."

James Fenimore Cooper

The 1826 installment, The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757, became the best-known. Cooper's hero, Natty Bumppo, was a precursor to Tarzan: Born to white parents in the Province of New York (one of Britain's "Thirteen Colonies"), raised by Native Americans of the Delaware tribe, educated by his own people, and a fearless warrior.

Like Babe Ruth, James Brown and fictional boxer Apollo Creed, he had a lot of nicknames. The best-remembered is "Hawkeye," but he was also called "Trapper," inspiring two characters in the M*A*S*H franchise. On that show, Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce (played by Alan Alda) said that his father, also a doctor, nicknamed him "Hawkeye" after Bumppo, since it was his favorite book.

Bumppo's nicknames also included "Leatherstocking," "Straight-Tongue," "The Pigeon," "The Lap-Ear," "Pathfinder"; and, for his skill with a rifle, "Deerslayer" and "La Longue Carabine": The Long Rifle. The Tales tell of his life from 1740 to 1806, including the American Revolution.

Cooper wrote 5 novels about Bumppo, and also wrote seafaring novels, and what would now be considered historical fiction. He died on September 14, 1851, the day before his 62nd birthday, in Cooperstown.

Natty Bumppo has been played in film version of The Last of the Mohicans by Harry Lorraine in 1920, Harry Carey (not "Caray") in 1932, Randolph Scott in 1936, Kenneth Ives in a BBC production in 1971, Steve Forrest in an NBC TV-movie 1977, and Daniel Day-Lewis in 1992. In fitting with the whole "first frontier" idea, Carey and Scott had already become known as actors in Western films.

How to Go to a Syracuse Football Game

This Saturday, what was once a Big East Conference rivalry, and is now an Atlantic Coast Conference rivalry, will be played: Syracuse University will host the University of Pittsburgh.

Before You Go. Syracuse is in Central New York. For a big chunk of the year, it is so cold! (How cold is it?) It's so cold, they call it Sibercuse, after Siberia. It's a big reason why they built a stadium with a dome.

That shouldn't be a problem for this weekend. For this Saturday, the local newspaper, The Syracuse Post-Standard, is predicting temperatures in the low 70s for daylight, and the high 50s for the evening. However, they are predicting "An A.M. shower." If you're staying overnight instead of headed back down. Sunday will be warmer, but they're expecting rain again. This won't affect you inside the dome, but you won't be indoors the entire trip.

Syracuse is in the Eastern Time Zone, so it will be the same time there that it is here.

Tickets. The Carrier Dome is listed as seating 49,262 people, about the same as the new Yankee Stadium and less than the expanded Rutgers Stadium. But they haven't had a sellout in 4 years, and it's been 2 years since they even topped 36,000 for a game. So getting tickets shouldn't be hard.

Getting There. It's 249 miles from Midtown Manhattan to the Carrier Dome. Too close to fly. Google Maps recommends taking Interstate 80 West across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, then Exit 293 to Interstate 380 North to Scranton, and Exit 187 to Interstate 81 North from there to Syracuse, at Exit 17, and says this will take a little over 4 hours.

It works out to about an hour and 15 minutes in New Jersey, an hour and a half in Pennsylvania, and an hour and a half back in New York, for a total of 4 hours and 15 minutes. Throw in a rest stop around Scranton (or 2 shorter ones around Easton and Binghamton), and you're looking at 5 hours each way.

You could just take the New York State Thruway all the way up, first on Interstate 87 North, then, at Albany, switching to Interstate 90 West, and getting off at Exit 36. But, according to Google Maps, this would add 46 miles and 48 minutes to your trip. So, in this case, 3 States - 4 if you count New York twice - are better than 1.

Amtrak is a problem. The first Empire Service train of the day, the Toronto-bound Maple Leaf, doesn't get to Syracuse until 12:43 PM, after kickoff. And the last one of the day, also the Maple Leaf, leaves for Penn Station at 3:28, probably before the final gun. So unless you want to go up Friday, come back Saturday, and spend both Friday and Saturday nights in a hotel, Amtrak is out. Round-trip fare: $157.

Greyhound doesn't quite work, either: Unless you want to leave Port Authority Bus Terminal between 12:00 midnight and 1:00 AM, and arrive before 6:00, you'd leave at 7:00 and arrive at 12:10 PM, just 20 minutes before kickoff. You'd never make it. Round-trip fare is $98, but it can drop to $76 with advanced purchase.

Both Amtrak and Greyhound use the William F. Walsh Transportation Center, at 1 Walsh Circle, just off I-81 and Onondaga Lake, 3 miles northwest of downtown, and 4 1/2 miles northwest of the Dome. Bus 14 to Bus 18.

Once In the City. New York was 1 of the 13 Original Colonies, and became the 11th State to ratify the Constitution of the United States on July 26, 1788.

Founded in 1825, and known as the Salt City for its former main industry, Syracuse was named for Siracusa on the island of Sicily. It is not the only city in New York State named for a major European city. Next-door to Syracuse is a town named Liverpool. There's also a Manchester, a Madrid, a Lisbon, an Amsterdam, a Rotterdam, a Stockholm, a Copenhagen, a Berlin, a Hanover, a Dresden, a Warsaw, a Rome, a Milan, a Turin, a Venice, a Naples, a Verona and, also named for a city in Sicily, a Palermo.

Syracuse is easily the biggest of the New York versions of these cities, being home to about 145,000 people, making it the 4th-largest city in the State behind New York City, Buffalo and Rochester; and about 660,000 in its immediate area. As with the Pennsylvania State capital of Harrisburg, Syracuse is roughly where the Northeast turns into the Midwest.

Maxwell Hall (left) and Crouse College (right),

on the Syracuse University campus

The Sales tax in New York State, outside New York City, is 4 percent. ZIP Codes for Central New York start with the digits 13, including Syracuse, at 13244 -- the explanation for those last 2 digits to come. The Area Code is 315, with 680 as a newly-added overlay.
Syracuse is the seat of Onondaga County. James Street divides street addresses into North and South, Salina Street into East and West. The Central New York Regional Transportation Authority runs the buses, and a single fare is $2.00, and a day pass $5.00. Interstate 481 is an incomplete "beltway."

City Electric Company runs the electricity. The city is about 45 percent white, 30 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic, 6 percent Asian, and 1 percent Native American.

Syracuse University, standing on University Hill, was founded by the Methodist Church in 1870, but in 1920 officially became nonsectarian. Aside from its sports programs, it is renowned for its programs in information studies and library science, architecture, business administration, and journalism and communications.

In particular, thanks to the great New York sportscaster Marty Glickman having gone there, other would-be sportscasters from New York have done there. Glickman was followed by Marv Albert, Bob Costas, Len Berman, Ed Coleman, Gary Apple, Mike Tirico, Ian Eagle, Craig Carton (okay, bad example) and Adam Schein, ; and, while they're from elsewhere, Boston's Dick Stockton, Sean McDonough, Joe Castiglione and Dan Roche; Philadelphia's Jayson Stark and Michael Barkann; and San Francisco's Greg Papa.

Notable Syracuse graduates in other fields include:

* Literature: Novelist Shirley Jackson, novelist Joyce Carol Oates, critic Hilton Kramer, Marmaduke cartoonist Brad Anderson, novelist Jay McInerney, literary agent Morton Janklow (who rose to fame representing McInernery), poet Stephen Dunn. Novelist Stephen Crane dropped out, later admitting he came "more to play baseball than to study."

* Journalism (other than sports): Henry Jarvis Raymond, Dorothy Thompson, S.I. Newhouse Jr. and his brother Donald Newhouse, Harold E. Martin, Harry Rosenfeld, Fred Silverman, Robert Scheer, Ted Koppel, Mike McAlary, Steve Kroft, Jeff Glor, Contessa Brewer, Samantha Brown, Mary Calvi and Megyn Kelly.

* Fashion: Designer Betsey Johnson.

* Business: Home Shopping Network founder Lowell Paxson, Raymour & Flanigan co-founder Bernard Goldberg, and Studio 54 runner Steve Rubell.

* Politics: Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, former Attorney General Beau Biden of Delaware; Secretary of Commerce John T. Connor; Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala; Governors Craig Benson of New Hampshire, Arthur Hannett of New Mexico; Senators Biden, Angus Cameron of Wisconsin, Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, Al D'Amato of New York; and current Congressman Steve Rothman of New Jersey.

Also Belva Ann Lockwood, the 1st woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court, and the Presidential nominee of the Equal Rights Party in 1884 and 1888; William Safire, speechwriter for President Richard Nixon, who became a Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist for The New York Times; and pollster John Zogby.

* Science: Heart surgeon Robert Jarvik; Eileen Collins, the 1st woman to command a Space Shuttle mission; and Sultan bin Salman, a Saudi prince (a son of the current monarch, King Salman) and a pilot in their Royal Air Force, who in 1985 became the youngest person to fly into space (29, and he still holds the record), as well as the 1st royal, the 1st Muslim, and the 1st person of Arab descent to do so.

* Entertainment: Actors Peter Falk, Suzanne Pleshette, Frank Langella, Peter Weller, Vanessa Williams (also a singer and a Miss America) Taye Diggs, Tom Everett Scott, Heather Dubrow, Vera Farmiga; screenwriter Aaron Sorkin; songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen; rock legends Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals and Lou Reed of The Velvet Underground; comedians Jerry Stiller and Lisa Lampanelli, disc jockeys Dick Clark and Bob Shannon. Also, the Friends character Rachel Green, played by Jennifer Aniston, was said to be a Syracuse graduate.

Going In. The official address of the Carrier Dome is 900 Irving Avenue, at the western edge of the Syracuse University campus, a mile and a half southeast of downtown. Bus 40 or 48. If you drive in, parking is $25.

It opened in 1980, on the site of SU's previous facility, Archbold Stadium. That stadium opened in 1907, it seated 40,000 at its peak, but by the 1970s, it was deteriorating, and the fire department ordered part of it closed off, reducing capacity to 26,000.

Archbold Stadium, with its famed gate

That meant that, with the coming of Division I-AA, the NCAA would "relegate" Syracuse without a 30,000-seat stadium. So 'Cuse tore down Archbold Stadium, built the Carrier Dome, and played their 1979 home games at the Buffalo Bills' stadium.

For the same reason, West Virginia built a new stadium at the same time. Rutgers did not: Instead of expanding their 23,000-seat stadium built in 1938, they moved half their home games to the Meadowlands, which satisfied the NCAA into giving them the precious Division I-A classification. This was also true for Temple University in Philadelphia, who abandoned their crumbling 20,000-seat ghetto stadium to play all their home games at Veterans Stadium, and now Lincoln Financial Field.

The Scarlet Knights and the Owls should have built a new stadium when the Orangemen and the Mountaineers did, particularly with all the goodwill from the school's 1976 successes, as both the basketball team (until the Final Four) and the football team went undefeated in that calendar year.

Because the roof prevents the Sun from interfering with play, Syracuse is one of the few major college football teams that plays its home games on a field that runs east to west instead of the standard north to south. But it also prevents grass from growing, so the field is artificial turf. Syracuse has not played a home game on real grass since Archbold Stadium was closed.

Football configuration

It's the largest on-campus indoor stadium in the country, and the largest indoor stadium in the Northeastern U.S. (Montreal and Toronto have larger domed stadiums, but, of course, those are not in the U.S.) The dome holds in the noise, so the stadium is known as The Loud House. But it's much more intimidating for a crowd of 35,446 in basketball than it is for one of 49,262 in football.

The naming rights are owned by the Carrier air-conditioning company -- and yet, the stadium is not air-conditioned! Or heated. The former is a problem in September, the latter definitely in November. In another irony, while the Dome was being built in 1979, Carrier was bought out by United Technologies.

In 2009, on the 50th Anniversary of the National Championship he helped win, the field was named Ernie Davis Legends Field. Frankly, given his record as his 42nd season as head coach dawns, I'm surprised the basketball court hasn't been named after Jim Boeheim.

The Dome hosts the New York State high school football and band championships, and the New York State Fair. It hosted the Big East Conference basketball tournament in 1981 (the only time it's been held somewhere other than Madison Square Garden), many NCAA Tournament games, 2 NCAA lacrosse championships, and 2 NCAA track & field championships.

Basketball configuration

In 2014, it hosted the Toyota Frozen Dome Classic, between nearby minor-league hockey teams, the Syracuse Crunch and the Utica Comets. It's hosted concerts by Frank Sinatra, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, The Who, David Bowie, Elton John, Billy Joel, The Police, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, U2, Taylor Swift and Drake.

Hockey configuration. The Syracuse Crunch wear blue jerseys.

Food. Unlike many college football stadiums, the Carrier Dome does sell alcohol, including beer and wine, but only sell the harder stuff in private boxes. SU is proud of their "Brew and BBQ" stand, located between aisles 117 and 118, featuring pulled pork and Chicken-Swiss sandwiches.

Their hot dogs are made by Hofmann, and include "German Frank" and "Hoffmann Coney" -- a chili dog, in the Midwestern style. They have Dunkin Donuts stands, and Sbarro pizza.

Team History Displays. Syracuse University has used orange as its main color since 1890. Until 2004, the teams' names were the Orangemen and the Orangewomen. The names were changed, in each case, to simply "Orange."

Contrary to the assumption of many, it has nothing to do with not wanting to be associated with the Orange Order, a.k.a. the "Orangemen," the Protestant fraternal organization so often (fairly or not) identified with anti-Catholic terrorism in Ireland. Rather, they just wanted to make the name gender-neutral. Funny, but I notice that other school known for wearing Orange, the University of Tennessee, still calls its teams the Volunteers and the Lady Vols.

Syracuse has won the Lambert Trophy, and its successor the Lambert-Meadowlands Trophy, as the best college football team in the 1952, 1956, 1959, 1966, 1987 and 1992 seasons. It was essentially designed to serve as a conference championship, because most of the teams in the Northeast weren't in one.

Not having been part of a league until joining the Big East for all sports but football in 1979, and then for football in 1991, Syracuse didn't win its 1st league title in football until 1996, also winning the Big East in 1997, 1998, 2004 and 2012. However, a scandal was later uncovered, and the school had to vacate not only its 2004 title, but all of its wins from the 2004, '05 and '06 seasons. They joined the Atlantic Coast Conference for the 2013 season, and have struggled ever since, going just 20-34 counting the start of this season.

In 1959, led by head coach Ben Schwartzwalder and sophomore running back Ernie Davis, they won the National Championship, including their 1st bowl win, the 1960 Cotton Bowl. They had previously reached the 1957 Cotton Bowl, led by Jim Brown, but lost a classic, 28-27 to Texas Christian University and their star running back, Jim Swink. Brown went on to become, in some minds, the greatest NFL player ever; Swink, except for the inaugural AFL season of 1960 with his hometown Dallas Texans, didn't play pro ball, instead becoming a doctor, including a hero surgeon in the Vietnam War.

Syracuse could have won at least a share of the 1987 National Championship by winning the 1988 Sugar Bowl, as they came in 11-0, but Auburn kicked a field goal on the last play of the game to tie it 16-16. A Syracuse radio station mailed Auburn coach Pat Dye 2,000 ugly ties. Not to be outdone, Dye autographed them all and auctioned them off, raising $30,000 for Auburn's scholarship fund. Ironically, Auburn shares their colors, orange and blue. Also the colors of the Mets, the Knicks and the Islanders, although in the Orange's case, it has nothing to do with the Dutch founders of the city and the State of New York.

The Orange have also won the 1961 and 1996 Liberty Bowls, the 1979 Independence Bowl (despite playing all their home games in Buffalo), the 1989 and 1992 Hall of Fame Bowls (for the 1988 and 1991 seasons), the 1989 Peach Bowl, the 1990 Aloha Bowl, the 1993 Fiesta Bowl, the 1996 Gator Bowl, the 1999 Music City Bowl, the 2010 and 2012 Pinstripe Bowls at Yankee Stadium, and the 2013 Texas Bowl.

On November 12, 2005, Syracuse University retired number 44 to honor the legacy of those who wore it as well as the number itself, which has become so associated with Syracuse that the University's ZIP Code, 13244, was requested by university officials to remember those who wore 44 for the Orange.

Since 1921, 25 players wore the number, and 3 earned All-America honors. The 3 most famous Number 44s were running backs Jim Brown (senior year: 1956), Ernie Davis (1961) and Floyd Little (1966). In 1961, Davis became the 1st black player to win the Heisman Trophy. (The runner-up was also black: Ohio State running back Bob Ferguson.) Like Brown, Davis was acquired by the Cleveland Browns, whose uniforms are similar to Syracuse's, but did not get to play, as he suffered from leukemia and died in 1963.

Brown, Davis and Little have been elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. So have 6 other Syracuse players, with the following senior years: Guard Joe Alexander, 1920; end Vic Hanson, 1926; running back Larry Csonka, 1967; receiver Art Monk, 1979 defensive tackle Tim Green, 1985 (now a sportscaster and novelist); and quarterback Don McPherson, 1987. Also elected have been head coaches Frank "Buck" O'Neill (for whom the legendary Negro League ballplayer John O'Neil was nicknamed), 1906-19; Ben Schwartzwalder, 1949-73; and Dick MacPherson, 1980-90.

Brown, Little, Csonka and Monk have been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. So have center Jim Ringo (1952), tight end John Mackey (1962) and receiver Marvin Harrison (1995 -- who, like Mackey, wore Number 88 with the Colts, albeit in Indianapolis instead of Baltimore like Mackey). Donovan McNabb (1998), who also played basketball at Syracuse, may join them, as he is now eligible.

These honorees, the title banners, and murals showing great moments in Orange football history, are shown at the base of the Carrier Dome's roof.

Syracuse's main rivals have been Penn State, also on the "border" between the nation's Northeast and its Midwest; Rutgers and Boston College on the Northeast side; and Pittsburgh and West Virginia on the Midwestern side. Having moved to the ACC means that their rivalries with BC (which they lead 30-19) and Pitt (which they trail 38-31-3) are still on. But they no longer regularly play Penn State (whom they trail 43-23-5), Rutgers (whom they lead 30-12-1) or West Virginia (whom they lead 33-27). None of these rivalries comes with a well-known trophy.

(UPDATE: Through the 2019 season, Syracuse leads BC 31-21, but trails Pitt 40-32-3.)

Stuff. There are 2 Orange Shoppes inside the Carrier Dome, behind Aisles 109 and 122. The University Bookstore is at 303 University Place, across from the main library, and about a 5-minute walk northeast of the Dome.

There is no recent comprehensive book history of Syracuse football. Michael A. Mullins wrote Syracuse University Football: A Centennial Celebration, but that was published back in 1989. You might be better off with the 2009 DVD The Legends of Syracuse. Brothers Gary and Maury Youmans wrote '59: The Story of the 1959 Syracuse University National Championship Football Team.

During the Game. Syracuse does not have a dirty reputation, either for its players or its fans. Be courteous to the home fans, and you'll be fine.

In 1980, Syracuse introduced not only the Carrier Dome, but also, in the wake of the San Diego Chicken, the Phillie Phanatic, and others, their mascot, Otto the Orange. He succeeded the politically-incorrect Native American mascot, the Saltine Warrior.

We are coming up on the 20th Anniversary of my meeting Otto: On October 9, 1997, Syracuse came to Rutgers Stadium and, on an ESPN Thursday night broadcast, beat RU 50-3. I managed to get down to where Otto and the SU cheerleaders were, and I yelled, "Hey, Syracuse: Your mascot is a fruit!" Well, he is.

Syracuse's fight song is titled "Down the Field."

After the Game. Your comfort might be an issue, due to Syracuse's cold weather, but your safety will not be.

There aren't many postgame meal options around the Dome. You may have to head back downtown. Marshall Street, northeast of downtown, used to be the place (if you're a Rutgers fan, think Easton Avenue; Ohio State, High Street), but most of the surviving renowned places seem to be on S. Crouse Avenue: The Orange Crate (121), Harry's (700), Faegan's (734) and Varsity Pizza (802).

If you're looking for 44's Tavern, named for the famous uniform number, don't bother: It's gone. It became Konrad's in 2000, named for the last player to wear the number; then got shut down in 2004, for serving liquor to minors. It's now a Verizon Store. 113 Marshall Street.

If your visit to Syracuse is during the European soccer season, as we are now in, the leading place to watch your favorite club play is J. Ryan's Pub, at 253 E. Water Street, at Montgomery Street, downtown.

Sidelights. Syracuse is 249 miles from Midtown Manhattan, 144 miles from Albany, 93 miles from Cooperstown, 87 miles from Rochester, and 149 miles from Buffalo. It's not exactly near anything except its own places to go.

From 1962 until the Carrier Dome opened in 1980, Syracuse's athletic program was headquartered at Manley Field House. It now includes the Carmelo K. Anthony Basketball Center, since 'Melo donated $2 million to build it. 1301 E. Colvin Street, at Comstock Avenue, a mile southeast of the Dome, and about a 25-minute walk from the center of campus.

Syracuse won basketball's National Championship in 2003, led by 'Melo and Jerry McNamara; reached the Final in 1987 with Derrick Coleman, Sherman Douglas and Rony Seikaly, and 1996, with John Wallace; and also reached the Final Four in 1975 with Rudy Hackett and Jim Lee, 2013 with Michael Carter-Williams, and 2016 with Michael Gbinije and Tyler Lydon.

They won the Big East in the regular season in 1980, 1986, 1987, 1990, 1991, 2000, 2003, 2010 and 2012; and the Conference Tournament in 1981, 1988, 1992, 2005 and 2006 -- but never both in the same year. They have yet to win the ACC, either in the regular season or in the Tournament.

Other star Orange basketball players include Dave Bing (1966), Louis Orr (1980), Danny Schayes (1981), Dwayne "the Pearl" Washington (1986), and Billy Owens (1991).

In Triple-A ball, in the International League, the Syracuse Chiefs (a Yankee farm team from 1967 to 1977, with the Toronto Blue Jays from 1978 to 2008, and now with the Washington Nationals) are at the 11,000-seat NBT Bank Stadium. It also hosted professional soccer's Syracuse Salty Dogs in 2003 and 2004. 1 Tex Simone Drive, 2 blocks from the Walsh Transportation Center, and 2 1/2 miles north of downtown. Bus 16.

Previously, the Chiefs played at the 10,500-seat MacArthur Stadium from 1934 to 1996, 2 blocks from the new ballpark, at 820 Second North Street. It also hosted minor-league soccer's Syracuse Scorpions from 1969 to 1974.

The Chiefs have won 8 IL Pennants: 1935, 1942, 1943, 1947, 1954, 1969, 1970 and 1976 -- the last 3 as a Yankee farm team. They've won Division titles in 1989 and 2014.

The Syracuse Nationals played in the NBA from 1949 to 1963. They first played at the State Fair Coliseum, built in 1927. It still stands, now known as the Toyota Coliseum, at Mohegan Street and Delaware Avenue, across Onondaga Lake from the Transportation Center and the ballpark. Bus 82.

In 1951, they moved to the Onondaga County War Memorial. There, led by coach Al Cervi and Hall-of-Famer Dolph Schayes (Danny's father), they reached the 1954 NBA Finals, losing to George Mikan's Minneapolis Lakers; and won the NBA Championship in 1955, defeating the Fort Wayne Pistons.

As the NBA grew in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Syracuse, like its neighbor Rochester, proved to be too small a market for a major league sports team. In 1963, the Nationals left, to replace the Warriors as Philadelphia's team, taking the name 76ers.

Now named the Oncenter War Memorial Arena, the Nats' former home has hosted several minor league hockey teams: The Warriors (1951-54), the Blazers (1967-77), the Firebirds (1979-80), and the Syracuse Crunch of the American Hockey League (since 1994). It still hangs banners honoring Dolph Schayes and the area's big boxing hero, former Welterweight and Middleweight Champion Carmen Basilio. 800 S. State Street, downtown.

Elvis Presley sang at the OnCenter on July 25, 26 and 27, 1976. The Beatles never got closer to Syracuse than Shea Stadium in Queens and Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto -- and the city is about halfway in between.

The NCAA held what we would now call the Frozen Four at the Onondaga War Memorial in 1967 and 1971; at the Utica Memorial Auditorium in 1962; at Cornell in 1967 and 1970 and at Union in 2014.

Right now, the biggest pro soccer team in Central New York is the Syracuse Silver Knights, based at the Oncenter, and playing in the Major Arena Soccer League. The next-closest clubs are the Rochester Rhinos (men's) and the Western New York Flash (women's).

The Rhinos are in the United Soccer League (USL), the 2nd division in North America. They've won their league in 1998, 2000, 2001, 2010 and 2015. In 1999, they won the U.S. Open Cup. The only non-MLS team to be in that tournament's Final since is the 2008 Charleston Battery. The Rhinos play at the 13,768-seat Capelli Sport Stadium, 460 Oak Street, 88 miles west of Syracuse.

The Flash also played there while members of Women's Professional Soccer (WPS), winning the title in 2011; and the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), winning the title in 2016. Despite that title, they moved to become the North Carolina Courage. A new Flash team now plays in United Women's Soccer, at UB Stadium on the University of Buffalo campus. (UPDATE: They folded in 2018.)

Lake Placid, site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics, is 210 miles northeast of Syracuse, and 285 miles north of Midtown Manhattan.

Syracuse's greatest legend (if not, in deference to Jim Brown, its greatest player), Ernie Davis, known as the Elmira Express, is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in his hometown of Elmira, 88 miles southwest. 1200 Walnut Street. 

The Museum Of Science & Technology, or MOST, at 500 S. Franklin Street. 

Several Presidents have connections to New York State outside of New York City, but none, really to Syracuse:

* Albany: Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt served as Governor of New York; Van Buren lived most of his life nearby, and he and Chester Arthur are buried near there.

* Buffalo: Millard Fillmore lived most of his life in and around the city, Grover Cleveland grew up nearby, William McKinley was shot there, and this forced Theodore Roosevelt to come and be sworn in there.

* Poughkeepsie: Franklin Roosevelt lived his life just to the north, in Hyde Park.

* Long Island: Theodore Roosevelt lived most of his life in Oyster Bay.

* West Point: Two Presidents were graduates of the U.S. Military Academy: Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The tallest building in Syracuse is the State Tower Building, 311 feet high, at 109 Warren Street, downtown. The fact that the tallest building in town went up in 1928 says something about Syracuse, and I'll let you decide what that is.

Despite going to high school in Glen Ridge, Essex County, New Jersey, Tom Cruise lived the 1st 9 years of his life in Syracuse, and filmed a war protest scene from Born On the Fourth of July on the University campus. A scene from the hockey film Slap Shot was filmed at the Oncenter.

When The Express, the film about Ernie Davis, was made, scenes were shot at the University, but modern buildings (including the Carrier Dome) had to be CGI'ed out. A lot of the filming was done in and around Chicago, and Northwestern University's Ryan Field was the stand-in for the demolished Archbold Stadium.

Although several TV shows have mentioned Syracuse, both the City and the University -- including a few episodes of The Twilight Zone, whose creator Rod Serling was born there -- the only TV show set there was The Trouble With Larry, Bronson Pinchot's post-Perfect Strangers sitcom. The trouble with Larry was that, unlike Perfect Strangers' Balki, he wasn't a sympathetic character, and the show was canceled after 3 episodes. Pinchot's career never recovered, but the cancellation enabled his co-star, Courteney Cox, to be cast on Friends.

The ABC soap opera General Hospital and its now-defunct spinoff Port Charles are set in Port Charles, hits about whose location suggest that it's a stand-in for Rochester, 86 miles west of Syracuse.

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There's not a lot to do in Syracuse, unless you want to go to a college football or basketball game. If you do, then there are few better places.

How to Visit the Baseball Hall of Fame

Nice skyline, huh?

In 1939, the Baseball Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown, New York. So did Doubleday Field, a small ballpark, supposedly on the site of baseball's invention. As part of the Hall's opening ceremonies, it hosted an old-timers' game, with players chosen by 2 members of the new Hall of Fame, Honus Wagner and Eddie Collins.

From 1940 to 2007, Doubleday Field hosted the annual Hall of Fame Game, between an American League team and a National League team. The 2008 game was meant to be the last one, but was canceled by rain, and there was no game in 2009. But in 2010, the Hall of Fame Classic began, returning to the old-timers' theme. Doubleday Field will host it this coming Saturday, May 27.

Before You Go. The temptation to go to Cooperstown may be highest when a player from your favorite team has been elected. Let me warn you: Unless this is your favorite player of all time, and you feel you must so honor him, do not go for Induction Weekend.

Cooperstown has never had more than 3,000 permanent residents, and it simply wasn't designed to host 100,000 visitors, but on Induction Weekend, it does. It's not the worst overflow that rural New York State has ever had: At least it smells better than Woodstock did.

Perhaps, without the added attraction of the actual induction ceremony, Hall of Fame Classic weekend will be more manageable. But the best time to go is probably in the Autumn, when the leaves are changing, and Central New York breaks out into spectacular color. That the World Series would be happening at the time is a nice bonus.

Cooperstown is a bit further north than New York City, so whatever the weather is in the City at the time, expect it to be a little cooler (or outright colder) in Cooperstown.

Tickets. Tickets for the Hall of Fame Classic are $12.50 for 1st base seats and 3rd base seats, and $11.00 for general admission seats in the outfield. They are available via phone at 1-877-726-9028, or at the Hall of Fame website.

As for the Hall itself, admission is $23 for adults, $15 for senior citizens (65 and up), $12 for veterans and children (7 to 12), and free to active or career retired military (with ID) and children (6 and under).

The Hall opens at 9:00 AM every day of the year except Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. From Memorial Day to Labor Day -- this year, May 28 to September 3 -- it is open until 9:00 PM. The rest of the year, it's open until 5:00 PM.

Getting There. It's 196 miles from Times Square to the Baseball Hall of Fame. It's also 189 miles from Yankee Stadium, 198 miles from Citi Field, 73 miles from the State Capitol in Albany, 94 miles from the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, 237 miles from Niagara Square in Buffalo, 238 miles from Fenway Park in Boston, 264 miles from downtown Montreal, and 219 miles from my home base in Central Jersey.

Even if it weren't that close, flying would be out of the question, as the nearest airport with regular passenger service -- unless you can afford a private plane -- is in Albany. There hasn't been passenger rail service to Cooperstown in decades. Getting there by bus is problematic: Adirondack Trailways runs service on Friday and Sunday only, 1 bus each day. Unless you want to go up Friday, stay over Friday and Saturday nights, and go back Sunday, you'd end up going up Friday or Sunday, and staying less than 3 hours -- and the Hall building itself should really be done over at least that much.

Really, the only way to get there is by driving. Take Interstate 87 North, as it becomes the New York State Thruway, and get off at Exit 25A. There may be a temptation to take your rest stop in Albany, the State Capital. It's a weird town, particularly in its architecture. The State Capitol, one of the few not to have a dome, looks like a medieval castle, but was completed in 1899. But it's surrounded by State office buildings that were either Art Deco masterpieces approved by Governor Alfred E. Smith in the 1920s, or Brutalist monstrosities approved by Governor Nelson Rockefeller in the 1960s.

The State Capitol in Albany

But considering the tangle of roads around Albany, I would advise you to take your biggest rest stop earlier, on the Thruway, and then getting back on, and continuing to Exit 25A. Take Interstate 88 West to Exit 24, then get on U.S. Route 20 West.

Now, you're 50 miles away. This doesn't sound like much, but this part is not going to be fun. The longest, most boring part of your trip is over, but here comes the most annoying part: It's a lot of going up a hill, with a nice view of the Catskill Mountains at the top, then coming back down the hill to a small town and one traffic light, then repeat.

At Cherry Valley, there will be a very nasty leftward curve. Take this curve very slowly, or it could turn out to be a "Dead Man's Curve." Make sure that it's still daylight when you get there, and if there's a chance that the weather could be bad, ask your GPS to find an alternate route before you leave your driveway. It won't be nearly as bad on the way back, as the rightward curve will be away from the big drop. But, on the way in, once you get past it, you're only 16 miles away.

At Springfield Center, make a left onto N.Y. Route 80 South. Now, you're only 11 miles away. You will soon have Lake Otsego on your left. You will then pass the Fenimore House on the left, and the Farmers' Museum on the right. Just 1 mile to go. Turn right on Chestnut Street, then, after 1 block, left on Main Street -- at the only traffic light in the Village. The Hall of Fame is 3 blocks ahead on your right.

If you do it right, you should spend 2 1/2 hours on the Thruway, and an hour the rest of the way. Counting a rest stop, it will be about 4 to 4 1/2 hours -- about the same as driving to Boston or Washington.

Once In the Village. Yes, it's "The Village of Cooperstown," not "The City" or "The Town" or "The Township" or anything like that. It was founded in 1786 by William Cooper, a merchant, a land speculator, a County Judge, and, in the 1795-97 and 1799-1801 terms, a Congressman from the Federalist Party.

Today, however, he is best known as the father of novelist James Fenimore Cooper, author of the 5 novels that are collectively known as The Leatherstocking Tales. For this reason, the teams at Cooperstown High School are known as the Redskins, and were so named before the NFL team of that name arrived in Washington, D.C. A statue of James is in the middle of Fair Street, a block south of Main.

Cooperstown has never had more than 3,000 permanent residents, and the 2010 Census listed its population at 1,852. It is the seat of Otsego County: Otsego is named for a Native American word meaning "place of the rock." The County is listed as having 62,259 people -- not even enough to fill the pre-renovation original Yankee Stadium.

ZIP Codes for Central New York start with the digits 13, including Cooperstown, at 13326. For the Hudson Valley, from Poughkeepsie on up to the border, they start with 12. For Western New York, including Buffalo and Rochester, they start with 14. The Sales tax in New York State, outside New York City, is 4 percent.

The Otsego County Courthouse,

about half a mile west of the Hall of Fame

Cooperstown doesn't really have a "centerpoint." Street addresses increase southward from the southern end of Lake Otsego, and westward from the river forming from it, the Susquehanna, which eventually flows through Pennsylvania, including its State capital of Harrisburg, and into Maryland's Chesapeake Bay. The area also doesn't have a beltway.

The newspaper for Otsego County is The Cooperstown Crier, named for "town criers" that would shout the news in olden days, before newspapers became widespread.

James Fenimore Cooper named Lake Otsego "Glimmerglass," and it can be very pretty. The Glimmerglass Festival operates every Summer, out of the 914-seat Alice Busch Opera Theater, on the lake, 8 miles north of downtown.

Parking is free on Main Street and other Village streets, but is limited to 2 hours, and, according to the Hall's website, this is "STRICTLY ENFORCED." The ALL CAPS are theirs, not mine.

The Cooperstown Trolley is a bus, designed to look like an old-time trolley, that runs to all local tourist attractions, including the Hall of Fame. From Memorial Day weekend (May 24) through Labor Day (September 1), it runs every day from 8:30 AM until its last departure from the Hall of Fame at 9:00 PM. From Labor Day through Columbus Day, it runs on weekends only, from 9:30 AM to 7:15 PM. An All Day Pass will let you ride it as many times as you want during a single day for $2.00. You can buy one from the driver.

A Trolley outside the Hall of Fame

Cooperstown is lovely. But it's hard to get to. In preparation for my 1st visit, in September 1985, I read a newspaper article that quoted someone as saying, "Nobody stumbles upon Cooperstown by accident. You have to want to come here."

So, Why Cooperstown? Why was this out-of-the-way little town (even if it is a County Seat) selected as the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame? Because it was selected as the "Birthplace of Baseball." Why was it selected as that? Long story.

In 1905, the National Commission, then the governing body for baseball, decided to settle the game's origins for once and for all, and appointed the Mills Commission, led by Abraham G. Mills, a former team executive, National League President, essentially the founder of the minor league system that prevailed until Branch Rickey rearranged things with his creation of the farm system, and the leader of the famous 1889 world tour of baseball players, which ended with a big banquet in New York that declared baseball a wholly American invention, in spite of the insistence of early baseball men, like the English-born sportswriter Henry Chadwick, that the game evolved from the English games of cricket and rounders.

The Commission included another former NL President, the 1st, noted Connecticut politician Morgan Bulkeley; and 2 early legends among players: George Wright, the shortstop of the 1st openly professional team, the 1869-70 Cincinnati Red Stockings, and star with the Boston team that would become the Braves; and Al Reach, a right fielder who starred in Philadelphia before founding the Phillies. Wright (rightly) and Bulkeley (less so) are in the Hall of Fame, while Mills (fairly) and Reach (unfairly) are not. But with guys like that on the Commission, essentially, the fix was in for finding an American origin for baseball.

Despite this, for nearly 3 years, the Mills Commission got nowhere. Finally, in late 1907, they found the story they needed, and they released it: Baseball was invented on June 12, 1839 in Cooperstown, New York, laid out in a cow pasture owned by the Phinney family, related to the Coopers by marriage, by Abner Doubleday.

This claim was given to the Commission by a 71-year-old mining engineer from Denver named Abner Graves (yes, also named Abner), who said that he witnessed Doubleday playing the then-popular game of "town ball," being played by students of 2 local schools on what came to be known as "Farmer Phinney's Lot," and watched Doubleday make the changes necessary to create a better version, and watched him give it the name "base ball."

Graves backed his story up by sending the Commission a diagram that, he said, Doubleday gave him. In 1934, someone visiting the Graves family in Cooperstown found a tattered ball, which was put on display in the Village Hall and later in the Hall of Fame itself (where it is still on display), and called "The Doubleday Ball," alleged to be the ball in the first game. The First Baseball.

Abner Doubleday was a real person. And if you were going to make something up, he was a great choice. He was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York -- 146 miles southeast of Cooperstown. He served in the Mexican-American War. He was second-in-command at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, when it was attacked on April 12, 1861, and he ordered the 1st Union shot in retaliation. Thus, he was there for the beginning of an epic story that would later chronicled by documentarian Ken Burns... The Civil War.

Abner Doubleday, an American hero,

and baseball was not among the reasons why.

He was one of the heroes of the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. He rose to the rank of Major General -- 2 stars. His multi-volume journal has been a godsend for people studying American military life in the mid-19th Century, including the Civil War and the Indian Wars. He commanded an all-black regiment, with no incidents. He was a financial backer of Thomas Edison's inventions. He even founded San Francisco's famous cable car company.

On multiple levels, Abner Doubleday was a genuine American hero. And he was a New Jerseyan the last few years of his life, living in Mendham, Morris County -- also the hometown of Governor Chris Christie and Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage -- although he is rightly buried at Arlington National Cemetery, not far from an actual sports legend, Joe Louis.

Note that the plaque on his tombstone

does not mention baseball.

It was also helpful that both Mills and Al Spalding, the owner of the team that became the Chicago Cubs, one of the pro game's 1st great pitchers, and the de facto Commissioner at the time, had also been friends of Doubleday's. It was also helpful that Doubleday died in 1893, and was, rather conveniently, no longer around to say, "Guys, the story isn't true."

The truth? Mills knew Doubleday rather well, and admitted that he'd never heard him claim to be the inventor of baseball. Doubleday's extensive journals mention baseball only once: In his duty as a quartermaster, he had requisitioned balls and bats for his soldiers, as there was a lot of down time between battles and they needed a diversion, and baseball had grown tremendously popular in the 1850s. His obituary in The New York Times didn't mention baseball at all. Based on the evidence we have, we don't know if Abner Doubleday liked baseball -- or if he ever even actually saw a game.

As for Abner Graves, he was old, and he was nuts. He apparently (accidentally?) burned down his own house, killing his wife. He spent a good chunk of his later years institutionalized. What's more, he would have been just 5 years old at what he claimed was the time of the game's invention. (I was 5 years old in 1975, when Carlton Fisk hit a certain home run, and I have absolutely no memory of having seen it then, not even on the news the next day.)

But here's the clincher, the part that makes the Doubleday story absolutely impossible: At the time, cadets at West Point were not permitted to leave the Academy grounds for any reason. If Doubleday had been in Cooperstown at any time in 1839, he would have been AWOL: Absent without leave. And there's no way he could have snuck off the grounds, gone almost 150 miles with no mode of transportation faster than a horse (there was no rail connection), gotten to Cooperstown, been involved with any sort of town event, gotten back, and snuck onto the grounds, without anybody noticing he was gone. It would have been days. He would have been expelled.

No, Doubleday did not invent baseball. Nor can it be called wholly the invention of Alexander Cartwright, who has been credited with writing the original rules for the game in New York in 1845 (and the evidence we have now suggests that other men wrote some of them), although it is worth nothing that Cartwright was elected to the Hall of Fame, while Doubleday has not been. Baseball wasn't invented so much as it evolved, and to name any one person its creator is, however well-intentioned, misleading.

New York's Madison Square Park, where Cartwright's Knickerbocker Club played intrasquad games, and Hoboken, home of the Elysian Fields where the Knickerbocker Club and other early clubs played, would each have been a better site for a monument to the game's invention, and for its Hall of Fame. But, as actor Donald Sutherland said in narrating a documentary for the Hall in the 1980s, "The decision of the umpire is final."

Stephen Corning Clark (1882-1960),

founder of the Baseball Hall of Fame

At any rate, in the 1930s, Stephen Clark, a Cooperstown-based businessman and a member of the old-money Clark and Corning families of New York State, wanted to drum up tourism in Central New York. He got the idea for the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1934, thinking of The Hall of Fame for Great Americans, at the Uptown Campus of New York University in The Bronx, now Bronx Community College. It's been mostly forgotten today, but it's still there, at 181st Street and Sedgwick Avenue, 2 blocks east of Ohio Field, NYU's old football complex. Metro-North to Morris Heights (University Heights station is closer as the crow flies, but not on foot), or 4 Train to Burnside Avenue.

Opening Day, June 12, 1939

Going In. The building itself is called the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum - or "MVSEVM," as they carved the name in as if it was Latin, which doesn't use the letter U. The address is 25 Main Street, between Pioneer and Fair Streets.

The main building opened on the alleged 100th Anniversary of the game's invention, June 12, 1939, with a lavish ceremony presided over by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and the Hall's founder, Stephen Clark, with 10 of the 25 men yet elected attending -- all of those still alive except for Ty Cobb, who arrived too late for the ceremony and the accompanying photo.

Top row, left to right: Honus Wagner, Grover Cleveland Alexander,

Tris Speaker, Napoleon Lajoie, George Sisler and Walter Johnson.

Bottom row: Eddie Collins, Babe Ruth, Connie Mack and Cy Young.

Sisler was the last survivor, dying in 1973.

Legend has it that Cobb got there late to spite Landis. It's not true: Transportation connections weren't what they would become, and Cooperstown, as I said, is hard to get to.

Since the Hall is, itself, a history display, I'll describe its exhibits in the usual category of "Team History Displays."

What was once "Farmer Phinney's Lot" was converted into Doubleday Field, which also opened in 1939. The main grandstand, behind home plate, looks it: Wooden benches instead of seats (metal or plastic), support poles, and a big roof. Grandstands were built down each foul line in 1960, and seating capacity is currently listed as 9,791.

That would make it one of the bigger minor-league parks, but the National Association, which governs minor league baseball, won't let anyone put a team there, because it doesn't have lights. So it hosts amateur games, such as high school and American Legion contests, plus the annual Hall of Fame Classic, as it has since 2010, as it hosted the Hall of Fame Game the day after each induction ceremony from 1940 to 2007 (plus an old-timers' game, with sides captained by Eddie Collins and Honus Wagner, the year before).

The official address is 1 Doubleday Court. Doubleday Court is a short street that extends south from Main Street, between Chestnut and Pioneer Streets. There is parking available -- it can also be used for visitors to the Hall, and costs $2.00 per hour or $14 for the whole day -- and the court has baseball-themed shops on it.

The field is natural grass, and points southwest, unusual for baseball fields. The fences are very close: 296 feet to the left field pole, a mere 336 feet to left-center, 390 to straightaway right, 350 to right-center, and 312 to right. I can find no record of who hit the longest home run there, or how far it went.

True story: When I first visited Cooperstown, on September 7, 1985 -- just as Pete Rose was getting ready to break the all-time hit record, so, naturally, that was the big topic of conversation in the Village -- there was a sign at the entrance to Doubleday Field, advertising a rugby match for Sunday, September 8. Rugby? At the birthplace of baseball? I thought that was weird, but, I figured, what the heck, I'd check it out.

But it rained overnight. The next day, at noon, right on schedule, I was there, and the weather was fine. Cliche alert: It was a beautiful day for baseball. But the little ballpark was locked up, the match canceled. Presumably, the field, not having access to a major league-quality drainage system, was still soaked. And I wondered if God thought using the "birthplace of baseball" for another sport was wrong -- particularly since rugby is, essentially, the father of "American football."

Food. Most museums have a cafeteria. The Hall of Fame does not. Nor does it allow food, drinks, or even gum chewing inside. (Nor smoking, nor chewing tobacco. This is not the old days, no matter how much history is inside.) They do have water fountains. But no cafeteria, or even vending machines. Nor does Doubleday Field. If you visit either, you'll have to soothe your munchies elsewhere.

Fortunately, Cooperstown has lots of places where you can do just that. None of them are chain restaurants: They officially keep them out. This also means no "big box stores": No Wal-Mart, no Target, no Home Depot. The closest thing they had to a chain store of any kind was a Newberry's "five-and-ten" that was next-door to the Hall, but it's long since gone.

If you must get a fast-food fix, about 4 miles south of the Village, outside of its jurisdiction, off State Route 28, is Cooperstown Commons, with a McDonald's, a Pizza Hut, a Subway, a China Wok (easily the closest Chinese restaurant to the Hall), a Crazy Cupz Frozen Yogurt, a Jive Cafe, and a Tops supermarket. It had a Tim Horton's, but it closed. Cooperstown Commons is flanked by a Holiday Inn Express and a Best Western.

The closest Burger King, Wendy's, Five Guys, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks to Cooperstown are all in Oneonta, about 23 miles south on Route 28. The nearest Outback Steakhouse, Olive Garden and Red Lobster are in New Hartford, outside Utica, 41 miles northwest.

In the 1980s, 22 Chestnut Street, at the corner of Main, was a wonderful ice cream parlor called Sherry's. Now, it's Mel's at 22, and it's just a restaurant serving "American classics." No baseball theme. Not named for Mel Ott, Mel Harder, Mel Queen, Mel McGaha, Mel Stottlemyre, Mel Hall, or even Bob Melvin. At least it's not named for Mel of Mel's Diner on the late 1970s-early 1980s sitcom Alice. "Pickup!" Cooperstown Back Alley Grille is at 8 Hoffman Lane. Lake Front is a nautical-themed place at the Lake Front Hotel, at 8 Fair Street.

The following are all on Main Street, running from west to east, and a lot of them are coffee houses, perhaps designed to cater to people wondering where to find Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts: 157, Schneider's Bakery, across the street from Mel's; 149, Alex's Bistro; 136, Cooperstown Diner; 134, Mt. Fuji, a Japanese restaurant; 110, Sal's Pizzeria; 99, Hardball Cafe; 96, Nicoletta's Italian Cafe, a bit pricier than Sal's; 93, Doubleday Cafe; 92, Danny's Main Street Market; 73, Cooperstown Beverage Exchange; 69, Carmen Esposito's Italian Ice; 64, Toscana, another Italian restaurant. East of that, Main Street is occupied mainly by the Hall on the south side, and by Cooperstown's municipal stuff (Town Hall, the Post Office, etc.) on the north side.

The following are all on Pioneer Street, a block west of the Hall: 31, Stagecoach Coffee; 46, Pioneer Patio and Slices Pizzeria; 48, Sherman's Tavern; 49, Cooley's Stone House Tavern.

The Hall of Fame's main entrance

Team History Displays. In this case, the "team" is all of baseball. When you walk into the lobby, to the left is the ticket booth. To the right is the Museum Store -- meaning you don't have to pay to get in to shop there. Straight ahead is the Hall of Fame Gallery itself, however the Hall recommends that this not be your first stop.

They recommend that you go upstairs, and start on the 2nd floor. The initial display is the Locker Room, showing lockers for all 30 current Major League Baseball teams, including their home and away uniforms, caps, current yearbooks, and other items. This used to be in the basement, carpeted in Astroturf, but is now on the 2nd floor.

Leaving this "present day" exhibit, you "enter the time machine," beginning the history of the game, starting with the 19th Century, then the early 20th Century, and an exhibit honoring Babe Ruth. The "timeline," as they put it, moves on to displays about the Negro Leagues, women in baseball, and Latin Americans in baseball. The display moves into the modern era. These displays include uniforms, gloves, bats and balls from historic moments in the sport.

The 3rd floor contains an exhibit honoring ballparks, including the cornerstones from Ebbets Field and Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium. Moving on, there's a display honoring Hank Aaron. He and the Babe are the only 2 individual players so honored, Hank's display having replaced one honoring Casey Stengel. Next is One For the Books, a tribute to baseball's records; Autumn Glory, about postseason play; and Who's On First, a tribute to baseball in pop culture, with the Abbott & Costello routine of the same name on an endless loop.

(Contrary to an urban legend, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello have not been elected as Members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Nor has any other entertainer, unless you want to say that all players are entertainers, or unless you want to count those players who have been actors (i.e. Don Drysdale on a number of 1960s TV shows, and Reggie Jackson appearing on a few 1980s shows and being brainwashed into trying to kill Queen Elizabeth in The Naked Gun). Abbott & Costello's film is played in the Hall of Fame, but that doesn't mean that they are "in the Hall of Fame." That term is reserved for elected Members.)

At this point, the Hall recommends that you return to the 1st floor, to see the Art of Baseball exhibit, an exhibit with memorabilia from the newest class of inductees, and, finally, the Hall of Fame Gallery itself.

It includes life-size wood-carved statues of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, showing remarkable detail. I particularly noticed how real even the Babe's five o'clock shadow and his belt loops looked.

The Gallery covers 5,000 square feet, about 10 percent of the Hall's total exhibit space, with, at the moment, 317 plaques. (It will be 322 after this year's induction ceremony.) Assuming the rate of new inductions remains fairly stable, the Gallery has room for another 30 to 40 years' worth of plaques, so it will be around 2045 before they have to make a decision about what to do, space-wise.

At the back are The First Class, the 5 men who got the necessary 75 percent of the vote in the 1st election of 1936. In order: Ty Cobb, 98.2 percent (technically, if not officially, making him the 1st Member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and his plaque is the one at the center of this X-shaped display); Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner, each with 95.1 percent; Christy Mathewson, 90.7 percent; and Walter Johnson, 83.6 percent. Then the players are shown in chronological order to the left of the viewer, wrapping around until the most recent inductees are to the right of The First Class.

Of the 50 men who got at least 1 vote in that 1st election, only Hal Chase, Johnny Kling, Lou Criger, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Nap Rucker, Bill Bradley (not the basketball player, he wasn't born yet), Kid Elberfeld and Billy Sullivan (not the New England Patriots' founder) have yet to be elected. Jackson, of course, is ineligible due to his gambling connection. So is Chase, for the same reason. As for the others, a case could be made for Rucker, but the rest fall way short.

Interestingly, active players were then eligible, and Rogers Hornsby, Mickey Cochrane, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx -- only 28 years old at the time, and with one of his 50-homer seasons still to come -- received votes. Ruth was also less than a year past his last game.

Eventually, the rules would be changed so that a player had to be retired for a full year (Joe DiMaggio had to wait 4 years, partly because some voters were not convinced that he wouldn't make a comeback), and finally for 5 full years. In other words, a player playing his last game in 2017 would wait through 2018, '19, '20, '21 and '22, and be eligible for election in the vote of January 2023.

The plaques are made by Pittsburgh foundry Matthews International, with the faces drawn since 1995 by a sculptor named Mindy Ellis, who, ironically, has only visited Cooperstown once, for the 1998 induction ceremony, at which she got a nice hand.

Their design has not changed since the initial induction ceremony in 1939: Each plaque is 15 1/2 inches tall, 10 3/4 inches wide, mounted on a 1 1/2-inch wooden frame, and weighs 14 1/2 pounds. The descriptive text on each runs 80 to 100 words, not including the listing of the teams for which the inductee played.

Some players, particularly earlier ones, are shown with no logo on their caps on their plaques. Some had their Hall-worthy contributions spread over more than one team. To use New York players as examples: While it was easy to say that Tom Seaver and Mike Piazza should have Met caps on their plaques, when they also did well elsewhere, it was harder for others. Reggie Jackson could have had the Oakland Athletics, but chose the Yankees, for whom he played "only" 5 years.

After his election in 1993, the choice was handed over to the Hall's research team. According to Hall president Jeff Idelson, "They'll look at a player's career numbers, and look at the impact. And quite honestly, it's usually a no-brainer. Then we have a conversation with the player, because we wouldn't do something unilaterally."

Still, Yankee star Dave Winfield's plaque has a San Diego Padres cap; Met legend Gary Carter, a Montreal Expos cap. Willie Mays ended his career with the Mets, but his cap is that of the San Francisco Giants, even though his most famous moment, his 1954 World Series catch, happened when the Giants were still in New York -- possibly to avoid confusion with younger fans who only know that curlicued interlocking NY as the Mets' logo, not the Giants', from which it was adapted.

Like Reggie, Catfish Hunter's accomplishments are divided between the A's and the Yankees, but his plaque has no logo. Wade Boggs won his only World Series with the Yankees, but he made his name with the Boston Red Sox, so his cap is Boston's. If Alex Rodriguez is ever elected, he'll probably have a Yankee cap. If Roger Clemens, who starred for 4 teams, but most notably for the Red Sox and the Yankees, is ever elected, the decision will likely be tougher.

There is a back door at the Gallery, and it leads to the National Baseball Library, or the A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center, as it's now known. It includes a bookstore, and an exhibit honoring the winners of the Ford Frick Award for broadcasters and the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for sportswriters -- considered "tantamount to election," even if the honorees are not actually shown in the Gallery.

The induction ceremony was held in front of the Library, on Fair Street, until 1991, before moving out to the Clark Sports Center.

Stuff. As I said, the Hall includes a Museum Store to the right of the lobby, and a Museum Bookstore in the Library wing behind the main building. Pretty much any book ever published about baseball is available, on order if not in person. The store sells all kinds of things, from equipment to replica jerseys, from team logo mugs to copies of the classic "Hartland statue" figurines, from videos to postcards with players' plaques on them.

There are lots of baseball-themed stores in town, such as Sandlot Kid Bat Company and Seventh Inning Stretch (both at 137 Main), Baseballism (131 Main), Cooperstown Bat Company (118 Main), Pioneer Sports Cards (106 Main), Yastrzemski Sports (75 Main), Mickey's Place (74 Main, named for Mantle), Hall of Shame Memorabilia (66 Main), Extra Innings (54 Main), and Cooperstown General Store (43 Main). Willis Monie Books (139 Main), while not strictly a baseball-themed joint, is a must-stop for anyone who likes to read.

During the Game. This category doesn't really apply in this case.

After the Game. Nor does this one.

Sidelights. The Heroes of Baseball Wax Museum is at 99 Main Street. It's not the shrine that the Hall is, but it's worth a look.

The Clark Sports Center, an athletic complex used by people from all over Central New York, has hosted the induction ceremony since 1992, due to having a lot more space. 124 County Highway 52 (Susquehanna Avenue), about a mile south of the Hall, across the Susquehanna River.

Cooperstown Junior-Senior High School is at 39 Linden Avenue, also about a mile south, but on the same side of the river as the Village. This is the closest thing to nearby teams in other sports. About 5 miles south is Cooperstown Dreams Park, which hosts an annual youth baseball camp on its 22 fields. That's right: 22 fields. It's like spring training and then some, but for kids. 4550 New York Route 28, in Milford.

There are many minor-league baseball teams in New York State. The one named for the alleged inventor of the game, the Auburn Doubledays, plays at Falcon Park in Auburn, 122 miles to the west. The closest team is the Tri-City Valley Cats, playing at Joseph L. Bruno Stadium in Troy, 75 miles east, at 80 Vandenburgh Avenue, across the Hudson River from Albany, representing both of those cities and Schenectady (hence, "Tri-City"), and successor to the old Albany Senators and the more recent Albany-Colonie Yankees.

Both of these teams play in the Class A New York-Penn League (formerly the Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York, or PONY, League), along with the Staten Island Yankees and the Brooklyn Cyclones. However, nearby Oneonta, where the Yankees had a farm team from 1967 to 1998 at Dutch Damaschke Field (15 James Georgeson Avenue), no longer hosts pro ball, only a "summer collegiate league," like the Cape Cod League in Massachusetts.

The Utica Blue Sox, who played pro ball from 1939 to 1950, and again from 1977 to 2001, are also now in a Summer collegiate league, although, oddly, not the same one. Donovan Stadium at Murnane Field, 898 Rose Place, 42 miles northwest of Cooperstown.

A Met farm team since 1992, formerly known as the Binghamton Mets, or the B-Mets for short, but now the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, play in the Class AA Eastern League, their opponents including New Jersey's Trenton Thunder, a Yankee farm team. "Rumble Ponies"? Are the My Little Ponies challenging the Care Bears to a rumble? Anyway, they play at NYSEG Stadium, 211 Henry Street, 82 miles south of Cooperstown.

In Triple-A ball, in the International League, the Syracuse Chiefs are at NBT Bank Stadium, 1 Simone Drive, 81 miles northwest. They were a Yankee farm team from 1967 to 1977, with the Toronto Blue Jays from 1978 to 2008, and now with the Washington Nationals.

The Rochester Red Wings (St. Louis Cardinals 1929-60, Baltimore Orioles 1961-2002, now Minnesota Twins) are at Frontier Field, 333 Plymouth Avenue North, 165 miles west. And the Buffalo Bisons (a Mets farm team 1963-65 and 2009-12, now with the Blue Jays) are at Coca-Cola Field, 275 Washington Street, 237 miles west -- further from Cooperstown than New York City.

The closest MLB team, and easily the most popular team in town, is the Yankees: 189 miles. The most popular NBA team is the Knicks, and in the NHL the Rangers: 192 miles. The closest NFL teams are the Giants and Jets, 184 miles away; but the most popular NFL team in the area is the Buffalo Bills, 242 miles.

The closest major college football and basketball team is at Syracuse University, 94 miles. The closest MLS team is New York City FC, 189 miles, slightly closer than the New York Red Bulls at 194 miles. And if you're looking for a "pub" to watch your favorite "football club" play, you're probably out of luck: The closest place might be Field of Dreams Steakhouse, at Cooperstown Commons, 18 Commons Drive.

Lake Placid, site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics, is 182 miles northeast of Cooperstown, and 285 miles north of Midtown Manhattan.

In addition to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Stephen C. Clark founded the Otesaga Resort Hotel (half a mile northwest of the Hall, at 60 Lake Street, a.k.a. State Route 80), the Fenimore Art Museum (a mile and a half north, 5798 Route 80), and the Farmers' Museum (5775 Route 80, across from the Fenimore Museum).

The most famous musical location in New York State, with the possible exception of Madison Square Garden, was Max Yasgur's dairy farm, chosen as the site of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, held on August 15 to 18, 1969.

The promoters wanted to hold it in the Ulster County town of Woodstock -- 104 miles north of Times Square and 85 miles southeast of Cooperstown -- because that was where Bob Dylan was living at the time, in the hopes that he would come. It's even been suggested that this was why anywhere from 400,000 to 500,000 people, about 3 times what the promoters had planned for, came. Many big stars came, and all became bigger stars as a result, but Dylan wasn't one of them.

But they couldn't get a permit from the Town of Woodstock, but they kept the name since it was already being publicized. They also tried and failed with the Town of Wallkill, also in Ulster County. They finally got a permit from the Town of Bethel, in Sullivan County, also in the Catskill Mountains.

But nobody planned for a crowd that ended up being about 3 times what they expected: The food, restroom and medical facilities (not helped by the "brown acid" version of LSD that was going around) were completely overwhelmed. And then there was the rain, which led to the mud, which led to the expression "dirty hippies." And while some performers' legends were made forever, others still say that it was the worst performance of their careers. Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane actually said that the music was better at the ill-fated Altamont concert in the Bay Area in December.

And there were 3 deaths: One overdose, one burst appendix, and one dummy went to sleep under a tractor for shelter, and it rolled over him. But, depending on who you talk to, there was anywhere from 1 to 3 births (no one has ever been able to track down "The Woodstock Baby," though), and God only knows how many conceptions and other children resulting from couples meeting at Woodstock.

There was no violence at Woodstock, unlike at Altamont. In contrast, a typical 1969 weekend in New York City saw 8 murders, or about 1 for every 1 million people. And there were about as many U.S. servicemen in Vietnam as there were people at the Woodstock festival, and a typical weekend there saw nearly 100 of them killed.

The farm has been converted into a performance stage again, an open-air amphitheatre seating 15,000, with a roof overhead, not unlike the Garden State (now PNC Bank) Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts is at 200 Hurd Avenue in Bethel, 92 miles south of Cooperstown, and 103 miles northwest of Midtown Manhattan.

The closest that Elvis Presley ever got to Cooperstown with a concert was the Onondaga County War Memorial, now the Oncenter War Memorial Arena, home of the NBA's Syracuse Nationals from 1951 to 1963, 80 miles away at 800 S. State Street in Syracuse, on July 25, 26 and 27, 1976. Even that is considerably closer than the Beatles got: Their closest shows were at Shea Stadium on August 15, 1965 and August 22, 1966, 196, miles away.

Several Presidents have connections to New York State. Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt served as Governor of New York. The current Governor's residence, officially the New York State Executive Mansion, was home to Cleveland and both Roosevelts. 138 Eagle Street in Albany.

Van Buren lived most of his life at Lindenwald. 1038 Old Post Road, Kinderhook, Columbia County, 126 miles north of Times Square, 24 miles south of Albany, and 94 miles southeast of Cooperstown. He's buried at the Reformed Dutch Church in Kinderhook, 3 miles north of the house.

Millard Fillmore was born in what's now the Buffalo suburbs, and his birthplace is a historic site. 24 Shearer Ave, East Aurora, Erie County, 356 miles northwest of Times Square, 247 miles west of Cooperstown, and 19 miles southeast of Buffalo. Cleveland lived all around New York State, including in Buffalo where he was Mayor and Sheriff of Erie County before being elected Governor and then President, but no home of his in the State survives.

Both men have statues in front of Buffalo's City Hall, which is on Niagara Square, whose centerpiece is an obelisk, a memorial to William McKinley, assassinated in Buffalo in 1901. I discuss their sites in my Trip Guides for Buffalo.

Chester Arthur, born in Vermont but living most of his life in New York State, and sworn in as President in his an apartment in a Manhattan brownstone that still stands (123 Lexington Avenue), is buried at Albany Rural Cemetery. Cemetery Avenue in Menands, Albany County, 153 miles north of Times Square, 6 miles northeast of downtown Albany, and 75 miles east of Cooperstown.

Theodore Roosevelt lived most of his adult life on Long Island. Franklin Roosevelt's home and Presidential Library are between U.S. Route 9 (the Albany Post Road) and the Hudson River. 4079 Albany Post Road, Hyde Park, Dutchess County, 85 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, 70 miles south of Albany, and 116 miles southeast of Cooperstown.

Two Presidents were graduates of the U.S. Military Academy: Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Visitors' Center is at 2107 New South Post Road, in West Point, Orange County, 50 miles north of Midtown Manhattan (Adirondack Trailways can get you there), and 146 miles southeast of Cooperstown.

Despite the Hall of Fame's role in baseball lore, there haven't been many TV shows or movies set there. A 1999 episode of Everybody Loves Raymond saw the brothers Ray and Robert Barone (played by Ray Romano and Brad Garrett, respectively) get kicked out of the Hall, where an autograph session was being held for members of the 1969 Mets. Ray Barone was a sportswriter who'd written an unkind column about Tug McGraw, one of the Miracle Mets who played himself.

The ABC soap opera General Hospital and its now-defunct spinoff Port Charles are set in Port Charles, hits about whose location suggest that it's a stand-in for Rochester, 174 miles northwest of Cooperstown.

As far as I know, the only movie to film inside the Hall of Fame building is A League of Their Own, which began and ended there in what was then the film's present day, 1992, before going back to the World War II season of 1943. Although the W.P. Kinsella novel Shoeless Joe has Ray Kinsella and J.D. Salinger visiting the Hall, the film version, Field of Dreams, does not feature a visit by Kevin Costner's Ray and James Earl Jones' fictional counterpart to Salinger, Terence Mann.

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Every baseball fan should visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. And if you need to bring someone with you, and they're not interested in baseball, Cooperstown, New York is a charming little town with lots to see for someone, whether they're into baseball or not.

Like the man said, You don't stumble upon Cooperstown by accident; you have to want to go there. Whether you like baseball or not, you should want to go there.