Cooperstown

On Nearly Dying

Sunday, December 28, 2025
Cooperstown, NY

Outside the Game: 
As often seems to happen before I head out on these trips, I had a rough night before thanks to various stomach ailments. I had a slow morning in the tub, then out food shopping, and then back for a leisurely nap.

Upon waking, I decided to solidify my vague plans of going up to Cooperstown and called the Railroad Inn to book a room, before packing a bag and heading out around 4 PM, which at this begotten time of year, was just before sundown.

Now what I didn't do, but should have done, was to check the directions in my Android phone to make sure it wasn't doing something, like, say, taking me off the perfectly serviceable main road and on some weird way across farm roads that would have, on paper, saved me a minute of travel time, as opposed to taking the main roads all the way up.

Yep, I should have done that.

Anyway, it had snowed in the last few days, but it was warm enough that the precipitation that night was rain instead of snow, which was a bit of a benefit on my dark and damp ride up into upstate New York. I realized a little too late that my navigation was, in fact, taking me a more technically direct way, that happened to cross a bunch of unmaintained (and unplowed) rural farm roads in pitch blackness with houses spaced every few miles.

There is the first time when you hit the brakes in the near complete darkness when they do absolutely nothing except make an urgent little "traction" light blare on your dashboard in the black darkness. You find a certain and immediate sense of your existence at that moment, and a profound distrust of the car's brakes in the future. I skidded and slid across the road for dozens of miles, firmly convinced that they were going to find my frozen body in the car some time the next day or so. Upon gratefully getting back onto more maintained roads for the remainder of the drive, my slush-covered car sped through the inky atmosphere as I tried to will my blood pressure back down. A recent Christmas present of a "smart" watch would later inform me of a "stress event" from the moment I realized I was going off the main roads until I pulled safely in the parking lot in Cooperstown.

I eventually did pull into the hotel around 8 PM, my diversion through the unmaintained rural backwaters of the state costing me a half hour or so and several years off my life. I was just happy to be out of my car, even though I had to skid into a parking space over an ice-caked lot.

I eventually checked in and got into my room by 8:30 PM, settling in and spending a good bit of time just staring at the ceiling until my adrenaline amped down enough to be a functioning human and not a human reaction machine. I called my mother, got ready for bed, and I was out cold by 10 PM.

The Accommodations:

My room at the Railroad Inn

After briefly flirting with a B&B, I decided to again stay in the only real hotel within Cooperstown proper, the Railroad Inn. I was happier and more appreciative than normal to arrive in one piece this evening, and the not-quite-boutique hotel provided another perfectly serviceable room and bathroom for me to use for the night, which is all I really wanted or needed.

On a Pleasant Diversion in a Closed & Fever-Ridden Town

The National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum, 2025

Monday, December 29, 2025
Cooperstown, NY

Outside the Game:
Despite my mental and physical exhaustion, and sleeping soundly, I couldn't sleep much more past 7:30 AM the next day. I wandered out to grab some fare at the much-improved breakfast bar at the Railroad Inn, groggily sitting a table away from an older couple who were the only other patrons up this early. I ate my fill and then dragged back to my room in the rainy gloom of the morning.

I took another little doze, had a shower, and packed up. The person manning the front desk had popped out to a local store for more provisions, so I just dropped my key in the box, put my bags in the trunk, and headed down to the Hall of Fame in the damp--but at least no longer actively raining--morning.

The Hall was just opening as I arrived, and I went straight through the members line, checked when the first movie showing was, and then wandered the Hall and the library (closed for the week), completely and gloriously alone.

Yakyu Baseball

I went up to the Yakyu Japanese baseball exhibit that had opened the day after my last trip up this summer, and was able to enjoy it similarly alone. They had a neat triple stamp card that did three-color printing as you went around the exhibit. It was completely bilingual (as you might imagine) and did a good job of covering all the topics in Japanese baseball from the beginnings to the present (if avoiding mentioning things like the suicides associated with Randy Bass). There was a video area that had different Japanese baseball traditions, including light-up umbrellas for the Tokyo Swallows home-run umbrella dance, which made me extremely nostalgic for Meiji Jingu stadium.

Tokyo rain

After, I wandered around until the first showing of the main movie. I made a post on Reddit about the mascot field alignment in the Kid's Corner illustration that blew up, and then went into the movie. Even though they ruined the theater (previously a gloriously tacky reproduction of the White Sox's old park and now just a staid film theater), the presentation was still excellent, and more than a few patrons were tearing up by the conclusion. I took a quick run through the rest of the museum that I had seen a few months before, and then spent too much money at the gift shop on my way out the door.

It was a Monday in the offseason in Cooperstown, so nearly everything was closed, including most of the restaurants. I stopped in 7th Inning Stretch for a bit more shopping, and the clerk there said that one restaurant was still open and that there was a huge snowstorm coming in that night. The forecast for snow was one of the reasons that I had decided to go up on Sunday instead of waiting a day (to avoid the Monday shutdown), so I quickly went over the bustling Railroad Cafe for lunch (it was the only restaurant open in town, so everyone was eating there). They were short-handed due to the flu running rampant in the region, and filled to the brim with everyone in town looking for lunch. I eventually consumed my fill and went back to the hotel to pack up and get the hell out of town well ahead of the snow.

I checked with the now-returned hotel attendant that they had my checkout processed and then headed out, making perfectly damn sure that I was only being led on the major roads home. Taking off a little before 1 PM, I had little trouble on the ride back and was safely parked up at home before the sun set, allowing me a diverting evening of laundry and playing with all the crap I bought.

The Accommodations:
Clifton, sweet Clifton

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

Stand-Alone Trip