Best Sports Venues/Road Trips: My Summmer visiting the 3 sports hall of fames in America

I’m one of the biggest sports fans out there and my favorite three sports are baseball, basketball and football. When I was told that in the summer of ‘07 I was going to all three of them (since hockey is in Canada) I was so excited since the Baseball Hall of Fame is something I’ve dreamed about going to since I first fell in love with the sport of baseball. I love the other sports but Cooperstown, New York is always romanticized about when you talk about all the legends that came before you in baseball history. The whole town is the museum, baseball fields, and stores.   

 

I was very lucky that I got to go the year that Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. got in since there were featured exhibits for them. Both of them played during my childhood in the 90s-early 2000s and when Gwynn died it was heartbreaking. I played Backyard Baseball 2001 with them both in there and had their cards from the game.  They also had a collage of all their baseball cards and I had a few of them. The best part for me was that my grandparents (my mom parents) met us there since they live in the NY metropolitan area. My grandfather and I always talk about sports but really baseball every week and he would tell me stories about the great Yankees, Mets and other NY athletes. So it was special to share that experience with him. 

What should really be America’s pastime is baseball and you really can believe that when you walk throughout the Baseball Hall of Fame. It has three floors where you can see all of the history of the game from era to era, player to player and team to team. One of the coolest things was the glass case of all the no-hitters balls.  The first floor has all the Hall of Fame plaques, baseball movies exhibit, broadcasters/journalist exhibit, and a learning center and kids area to play. 

The 2^nd floor is where you start the baseball history from Abner Doubleday, Babe Ruth, women in baseball, an African America baseball exhibit, baseball scouts exhibit and a section of recent baseball history of all 30 teams. The 3^rd floor has a ballparks exhibit, record section, postseason section and new exhibits every year. They suggest you start on 2^nd floor, then go to the 3^rd and finish on the first floor and buy from their gift shop. I’m probably the only person to buy baseball cards of recent players. I wasn’t done reading everything in each exhibit, my parents had to keep asking me to leave and hurry up but I wanted to read everything and look at all the plaques. I took photos with those cheap plastic cameras but never got them developed. 

The Baseball Hall of Fame is the best museum of all the sports because it’s an actual museum of baseball history.  After we went to the Baseball Hall of Fame my grandparents joined us as we drove to the basketball hall of fame in Springfield, MA which is called Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. I hate to say this but what my dad and grandfather had told me about it made it sound almost as cool as the baseball one but guess what? It was not. 

You pull up expecting it to be away from the city of Springfield Massachusetts like it is in Cooperstown NY, but its inside a mall complex, with a salon and pizza place next to it. When you finally walk in it’s a huge basketball court and you wonder where the actual museum is.  You see tons of camps having their kids playing basketball and that you find out that around the huge court in some of the rooms are the exhibits. For someone who knows lots about baseball but less about basketball I wanted the same experience of being able to look at a huge museum and learn more about the sport. 

With little exhibits, many stores, huge basketball court and the fact that it is not just the NBA but also for college, Olympics, foreign basketball, women basketball, and ABA. It is so unorganized as you’re walking around the big basketball court in these small rooms where there is no rhyme or reason why one thing is in one room or wall.  One second it’s talking about the NBA then it’s now about college basketball which was confusing and not entertaining. You can include college, Olympics, foreign basketball, women basketball and the ABA if you have an actual Hall of Fame/museum that has mostly NBA in it not what it is now.  I don’t want a mall and a basketball court that has some exhibits. 

If you read Bill Simmons’ “The Book of the Basketball” he has a whole chapter dedicated to how to redo the whole entire Basketball Hall of Fame. He brings up the point that the NBA doesn’t have one spot in the building showing its history and stats like in baseball (Cooperstown) or football (Canton) that in his opinion it should be in the small town where Larry Bird is from to make a point that Springfield doesn’t have any real historical point.  Besides where it is located he has a whole full proof system of floors of the Hall of Fame to have with the ABA and other basketball sections (college, Olympics, foreign, women’s) on different floors but most of the floors be about the NBA , teams, players (plaques), coaches/executives/owners, broadcasters/journalists, records, and all star weekend.  

After we bought our souvenirs of course we went to our hotel to enjoy the area like we did in Cooperstown. My grandparents left for NY metropolitan area and we were headed for Canton and Columbus since they are close to each other and my mom’s friend lives in Columbus. 

The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton is the 2^nd best sports Hall of Fame. It has the perfect combo of being a museum that shows the history of the NFL and a basement for the kids to play around and interact. It has a room of all the busts of all the Hall of Famers and so many exhibits about the history of football. The year I went it had a case with the jerseys of Devin Hester and  Nathan Vasher of the Chicago Bears for the longest kick return touchdowns. I learned so much about the history of football because no one really knows about the offensive linemen, punters, kickers and not all of the defensive players. It had so many signed footballs and other gear of Hall of Fame players or all time moments. It also has a section about all the Super Bowls with all of the Super Bowl rings from each year. In the kids area you can throw the football round and play Madden. It is the 2^nd best Hall of Fame because it has the perfect combination of a museum and kids area, unlike the basketball one where it is mostly an all-kids area. 

That summer is one of the best summers of my life being a huge sports fan. I had gone to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Canada but I was too young to remember it. 

So to rank in order the best sports Hall of Fames: 1. Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown 2. Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton  3. Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto   4. Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. 

**Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and the College Basketball of Fame in Kansas City are both great ones as well.**