Cooperstown: Field of “Stinky Smelly” Dreams

By Nolan Howe

My baseball team spent almost a year fundraising for our trip to Cooperstown All-Star Village, where we would be competing with 84 other baseball teams from around the country. We finally got to go at the end of June and we stayed for a week. We were all very excited. And when you’re 12 years old, Cooperstown is supposed to be like the Disney World of baseball, at least that’s what the coaches said. Everyone talks about it. “It’s the trip of a lifetime,” they say. And, okay, they weren’t totally lying. 

The bunkhouse area was really cool because that’s where all the teams stayed and was the place where we made friends with teams from California, Washington, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Georgia, etc. It had a small courtyard which was kind of like where baseball heaven meets summer-camp chaos. We were in a second floor bunkhouse which means some unfortunate team was below us for the week. Where coaches saw wall-to-wall bunkbeds, we saw an octagon for WWF sanctioned wrestling matches. Curfew was 10pm and “lights out” was 11pm. We may or may not have received a visit or two from the 1^st floor team…apparently they don’t watch the WWF in Washington. Initially the coaches tried to emphasize organization, but I think they forgot we were 12 so it quickly just ended up being clothes, bats, cleats, dirty socks and underwear scattered all over the floor. The coaches brought box fans and air fresheners, but they didn’t really work, it guaranteed that all of us had a chance to take in the scent of dirty uniforms and wet towels. And I’m not going to name names but at least one of my teammates didn’t shower that much and thought Axe body spray was the same as showering. I can confirm it is not.

What we really weren’t prepared for was the food, or what the brochure called a “dining experience.” You’d think a place built for baseball legends-in-training would serve, I don’t know, actual edible meals. Nope. One morning they served us stale waffles stuffed with scrambled eggs. Who does that? After a few days, most of us bypassed the steam table of powdered eggs and questionable meats and went straight for the cereal cups, a safer choice. Speaking of meats, Dad was so excited when he saw “RIBS” on the dinner menu. It was actually mystery meat that was stamped or pressed to look like a rib but really wasn’t, it was just a thin piece of…something? The highlight of the week was when we were served chicken nuggets, because what 12 year-old doesn’t like chicken nuggets?! Now, I’m not really sure about the quality of chickens in Upstate New York but that was no chicken. The nuggets were so hard that we could hear each other crunching away and I’m surprised nobody lost a tooth. We considered framing it but ended up eating it because…you know…hunger.

The best thing that everyone talked about was pin trading. Apparently, Cooperstown is less about baseball and more about becoming a black-market salesman for shiny metal buttons. Every team brought customized pins with their logo on them and the goal was to trade them with other teams and bring home a collection of the best pins – it was like Wall Street for 12 year-olds, only with less math and more screaming. One of our baseball Moms designed 3 awesome Pembroke pins and we each got 100 of each pin. Yes, that’s a lot of pins. We were given pin books to collect all of the pins. Dad bought me a cool Cooperstown plaque and I put all of my favorite pins on it. Even the umpires brought their own pins and we traded pins with our favorite umpires. 

Oh, and we played baseball. 84 teams were divided up into pools of 7 teams each. You played 6 “pool” games and then single elimination playoffs. We ended up playing 8 games. The fields were amazing, all turf fields and awesome dugouts, they even had a separate dugout for the parents right next to ours. The outfield fences were really short, which sounds awesome until you realize everyone is hitting home runs. The teams we played against were elite-level teams and it seemed like every kid in their lineup could hit a home run. We played against one team whose pitcher was 6’5”…12 years old!!!!! We became friends with their team and nicknamed him “Stork.” We are still on group chats with a lot of the ballplayers we met. I wish we could all go back next year and play against each other. Stork might be 6’9” by then.  

But here’s the truth: it was AWESOME. We played more games in a week than we normally play in a month and got to feel like actual big leaguers. Our team didn’t win a lot of games but that really wasn’t the point. I know I’m only 12 but Dad always talks about “perspective”, whatever that means. But when I look back at my Cooperstown experience, I’m not going to remember our record, my batting average, or how many bases I stole, but I’ll remember meeting kids my age from all over the country and getting to spend 7 great days with my Pembroke teammates for life.

So yeah, Cooperstown lived up to the hype. Just next time, I’m staying at a hotel with room service. I think that’s what Dad meant about perspective.