Going Inside The Baseball Hall Of Fame

Baseball Hall of Fame Plaque Gallery (Milo Stewart Jr. / National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum).

Inside the Baseball Hall of Fame features photos of the many artifacts in the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s possession. These include items that are not on public display.

Originally published April 24, 2013 at Fansided Radio:

Every baseball fan grows up wanting to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Some grow up wanting to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame Plaque Gallery. Some have attending a Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on their sports bucket list.

Over the last few days, I’ve been hard at work reading the recently published book, Inside the Baseball Hall of Fame, from our good friends in Cooperstown.

I visited the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown for my first and only time in the summer of 2001 when Dave Winfield, Kirby Puckett, Bill Mazeroski, and Hilton Smith were inducted. I wasn’t at the ceremony but that didn’t stop me from enjoying my experience at the Hall. I could have spent the entire day looking at artifacts and plaques.

However, as I have learned from the book, there are several artifacts in the Hall’s possession that fans simply are unable to view while touring the facility. There are pages upon pages of photos and captions of these baseball artifacts that are not available for public display. We’re talking bats, gloves, balls, uniforms, and historic documents just to name a few.

There’s a scorecard from the first-ever perfect game that was thrown by Lee Richmond way back in 1880. The bat that Ted Williams used for his 521st and final major league home run on September 28, 1960. A Chicago White Sox uniform that was worn for 3 home games in 1976–with shorts! This was a very short-lived experiment. A trophy that was made for Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day on July 4, 1939. A letter from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that insisted on baseball continuing as usual during World War 2.

There are 200 color photographs in this book. It comes up to an average of one photograph per page.

No baseball book collection is complete without this book. Don’t delay and buy this book today!