Cooperstown is a personal metaphor
of The Divine Narrative,
a story that is larger than my own.
Do you have a metaphor in your life
that connects you to a bigger story?
Far from the metropolitan monoliths where today's iteration of baseball is played--where security, celebrity and a wide swath of foul territory separate fans from players--is the quiet village of Cooperstown, New York. Of Cooperstown, mythical home and archive of baseball, historian Christopher Evans observed:
Particularly in Cooperstown, you feel close to the game's nineteenth-century roots. The town is not much more than a remote hamlet, set amid small green mountains at the tip of a long, narrow strip of lake. To call it otherworldy, out of time, Brigadoonish might seem extreme--except to anyone who has been there in summer. Then it would be almost too obvious to mention. It's a surprise to discover that the town's clocks actually move or that a Coke costs more than a nickel. You expect every local to be a farmer, tavernkeeper, or blacksmith (Baseball: An Illustrated History, p. 61).
The Hall of Fame, dedicated in 1939, appears to the casual observer to be an imposing house of worship. There I walked in the spring of 2000 amongst innumerable artifacts of baseball's celebrated past: Babe Ruth's overcoat; Ty Cobb's diary; Lou Gehrig's locker; Cy Young's pick-up truck; Jackie Robinson's uniform; a turnstile from Brooklyn's Ebbets Field; and more. I recalled the stories behind the artifacts: stories that were once just words on the pages of books I devoured in my youth; artifacts within my grasp that confirmed the veracity of those stories.
Prior to Cooperstown, my legendary heroes existed only in black and white newsreels; Cooperstown offered sensory evidence of their historical reality.
Since that memorable day at the Baseball Hall of Fame, I've experienced Cooperstown, beyond the township, when I stood atop "The Green Monster" of Boston's Fenway Park...when I sat among the "Bleacher Creatures" in the right field grandstand of New York's old Yankee Stadium...when I witnessed a ball fly over the ivy-clad outfield walls of Chicago's Wrigley Field...when I made pilgrimage to a dozen distant, historic cathedrals of baseball.
I experience Cooperstown in our home among decades of memorabilia. There's a signed copy of Connie Mack's 1950 autobiography, My 66 Years in Baseball. Mr. Mack was an institution in the Philadelphia A's dugout--replete in suit and tie and straw hat--for fifty years, managing the club from 1901 through 1950. It would have been difficult to fire Mr. Mack. He owned the team. Also among my treasures is a 1950 Brooklyn Dodger Yearbook in near-mint condition. The piece is noteworthy for a small article introducing the newest addition to the Dodgers broadcasting team, a young Vin Scully. The page was later autographed by Mr. Scully, still calling the Dodgers' home games after sixty-five years. Together, these two gentleman's careers have spanned the entire history of Major League Baseball, from 1901 through the present.
I experienced Cooperstown on a Sunday evening in October. I hurtled through the darkness of a lonely Mississippi highway, headed toward the Gulf Coast. Of the many small towns I passed through only one held any interest. It's the small town of Bond, Mississippi, former home to, and final resting place of, legendary pitcher and bigger-than-life character Jerome "Dizzy" Dean (active 1930-1947). As a young boy, I passed Mr. Dean as we walked through a quiet concourse of Dodger Stadium. It seems odd, a half century later and the breadth of the country farther, to have once again passed by within a whisper. Three days later I stood before the modest headstone of Mr. Dean and his wife of forty-three years. I reflected upon leaving home and coming home.
But Cooperstown shows up metaphorically in another, a most unlikely, place. Baseball's historic narrative of reconciliation--once the mythical subject of black and white newsreels in my imagination; now confirmed by a century of sensory evidence--strengthens my faith in the historicity of the ancient, archetypal story of reconciliation and coming home: The Divine Narrative of scripture.
What's your "Cooperstown"? Is there something accessible in your world that allows your five senses to metaphorically witness the distant Divine Narrative? Is it transcendent? Is it true? Is it timeless? How will it sustain you in a time of loss? I'm curious...If there was a "Cooperstown" filled with artifacts from The Divine Narrative of scripture, what would they include?
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