After taking in another Baysox vs B-Mets game on Friday night, XL and hit the sack with dream of baseballs and the Twins dancing in our heads. Saturday morning we woke up at the crack of 9:30 and headed out for Cooperstown. We
stopped at a place called Brooks House of BBQ along the way and had one hell of a lunch. Upon leaving Brooks, we were full of both various animal flesh, and excitement for the coming days. We hit Cooperstown and watched a few innings of the New York-Penn league game at Doubleday field. It featured The Oneonta Tigers and the O's affiliate, The Aberdeen IronBirds. We saw a few homeruns and the pitcher for the IronBirds almost died when he was hit by a line drive. That's baseball for you.
We walked around Main St. and wandered through the shops again. This is when we made a fateful error. We planted ourselves down in chairs right across from the front gate of the Hall. It was 5:30, and the event we were waiting for didn't start until 7:30. It was the "red carpet arrival" of the past Hall of Famers, and boy was it lame. We waited on that street corner suffering stupid 
comments from those around us, not to mention the chick who was talking on her cel phone like she was a DJ at a dance club. All we were rewarded with for our trouble was a tiny brass band, some really lame trivia, and a few douche bags reciting Casey at the Bat. Once the players did arrive it was Vida Blue out... oh wait that's black pitcher... I mean it was pitch black out. We could hardly see them by the tiny lights the Hall had set up, and many of them made a b-line from the van to to the door. Only Wade Boggs walked around and talked to people.Once Cal and his posse arrived XL and I bolted for our car. What were we in such a hurry for you ask. Well we had to get to our camp ground. This was out second mistake. We thought we would have a better shot at getting to the induction early if we were staying near Cooperstown, which is true, but there were no Hotels left this time last year let alone when we booked in November. So camping it was.
We got to the campground and took showers in the most disgusting showers I've ever seen. I scared the shit out of some poor guy who I miss took for XL, but that's another story for another time. After our showers we hopped back in our car and headed back into downtown Cooperstown for a night of little sleep and vagrancy.As we slept in the parking lot of the Cooperstown Agway we soon realized that it was going to be a long day on Sunday. We were right. We walked down to the Clark Center at 6 and were among the first 100 people there. Once we annexed a spot for our chairs we set about the work of shitting and eating, two staples of our trip. It was amazing to see the field fill up with such a large mass of
humanity. We took to calling it "Baseball Woodstock" since we were all gathered in a large field in Up State New York for some thing we loved. XL finished the Harry Potter book and I got a sun burn, but in the end it was all worth it. At 1:30 (shortly after the Merchandise tent closed by the way) The ceremonies commenced. Luckily for us they decided to mix it up due to some impending weather issues and let Tony and Cal go first, making the radio guy and the newspaper guy wait.Tony gave a great speech, mostly off the cuff, and my esteem for him has only grown during this trip. Cal was a bit more prepared (duh) but still gave a great speech, save for the kinda gay/kinda sweet thing he did with the white rose. It was the culmination of a long time following the Iron Man and I was proud to be an O's fan. That statement may not be true again for along time. Now we're back home and getting ready to go back to our jobs. Damn it!
For a full review of all the tasty vittles we had on our journey click on over to TGWOOfY.
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