The Rest of the Story Part Two

 

 

 

Side Bar

 

After the game as we were walking past Tommy Prothro practice field, I overhead a young USC fan discussing the game with a buddy, he said, “We can beat anybody in the nation, but we when come here, we suck!” Hold that thought young man. We will see you again in two years!

 

Penn State is now ranked # 12 in the nation. Do you realize that we could be 3-2 for the first time in several years, and that is with playing one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the nation? I sure wish we could play Stanford again. I think we would have a totally different outcome.

 

Next weeks game with Utah will not be easy to say the least. They are ranked

17th in the nation, and will probably smash Weber State today. That

will move them up even higher.  We also have to play in their house this year. Our away game record certainly could be improved upon.

 

The Ducks go to Washington State today. They should win pretty easily. They can bath in their great victory this week, but do you know who they play next? Yup! USC! USC is going to be head hunting, especially when any team with the name Oregon in it makes their blood boil.

Travels

 

As we were traveling from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Boston, we saw some beautiful landscape. The trees in the hills were starting to put on their new outfits for the fall. We were able to look down into big valleys full of corn for miles and miles. Our crack photographer, Lloye Liedtke, took pictures along the way. There was one problem. We were moving, and her trigger finger, was slow. A few of the pictures she ended up with were some fantastic pictures of trees along the highway, and some stunning sides of trucks as they went by.

 

We had fun teasing her, and she was great comic relief after a bad day watching our Beavers being taught how to eat humble pie. Actually she really did get some great pictures, and she sent me some of them. I will see if I can post some of them here on the site.

 

Along the way, I saw some of the old America. People were still drying their cloths out side on cloths lines. I can smell the freshness I remember as a child when I helped my Aunt Dollie hang the cloths on the cloths line at the farm. You can’t get any fresher than that. The dryers of today don’t even come close.

 I saw one humorous mail box along the way. It was a salmon with his mouth wide open, and that is where you put the mail.

 

The gas prices during our travels:

 

Maryland-$3.42

Pennsylvania-$3.41

New York-$3.48

Massachusetts-$3.43

 

At this time Oregon was $3.59. Oregon has gone down a lot since then. I saw gas for $3.39 at the Arco station coming off the I-5 freeway and headed east on Highway 34 towards Corvallis. They always seem to be lower than others.

 

We had one more side stop before we got to Boston. It was Cooperstown, NY. For anyone that knows anything about baseball, that is the Holy Grail spot for baseball history. It lived up to that name and more. Of course, I am talking about the Baseball Hall of Fame.

 

It is amazing to come into this town. It was only about the size of Silverton, OR, but even smaller than that. It had one main street, and one side street. The homes there were beautiful. They were the old style homes with the big wrap around porches like you would see in a movie like, Gone with the Wind. For you young whipper snappers, that was probably one of the top five movies of all time. Do a google search and learn all about it. Better yet, rent the DVD.

 

We stayed at an absolutely wonderful hotel in Cooperstown, called The Otesaga. We got there about noon, and we were told to go to the dinning room to eat. It was bigger than many ballrooms. Yes, their eating area was that big. It was a brunch type set-up that they do everyday. There was everything you could dream of to eat. I was a good boy and didn’t go to the feeding trough (brunch area) very often.

 

This hotel was built in 1909. Its architecture is the charm of the area. It is located on the southern shore of Otesaga Lake. The gentle breezes from the lake were a welcome feeling. We could sit out on the Veranda; have a drink and watch the sun got down with the lake right in front of us.

 

For dinner that night we had a choice of wearing a sport coat and eating in the dinning room, or going out to eat. Charlotte and I chose the dinning room. (After all, I had brought my sports jacket all that way.)

 

What an elaborate sitting, candles; fire place, cloth table cloths, and a dinner for a king. I had a salmon dinner that was out of this world.

_____________________________________________________________

 

OK, I know, you thought I was never going to start talking about the Baseball Hall of Fame.

 

There were three floors of memories to look at:

 

The first floor had all the Hall of Fame broadcasters, writers and story tellers. Dave Newhouse from the Seattle Mariners was just inducted this year. On the way out on the first floor was the Hall of Fame Plaque Gallery. It had bronze plagues of every baseball player that made the Hall of Fame. It was amazing to stop at each plaque and bring back the memories that went with the player that was represented there.

 

The second floor had tons of things to look at. I will not go into too much detail on each thing, but as you walked by the displays, it has a progression of how baseball evolved. It started with 1900-1930. It then was from 1930-1970, 1970-2000 and then to current times. It was interesting to see the progress of the game.

 

There was one room dedicated to Babe Ruth. I saw many pictures of him that were not anywhere else in the world. They were donated by family members. Here they showed a movie of Babe doing his pointing to the fence to show he was going to hit and home run on the next swing which he did.

 

Also on this floor was information about women in Baseball. I will never forget Ton Hank’s line in the movie, A League of Their Own, “There is no crying in baseball!”

 

It also had all the major league teams with photos, video highlights, and artifacts that were put in 30 major league lockers.

 

The third floor had baseball cards, all the records, no hit games, (BTW. I have the autograph of the only pitcher in the history of baseball that threw a no hitter in the World Series. That would be Don Larson. I had him sign four pictures, and gave three of them to my children.)

 

One baseball card was behind a glass incasing because it was worth 3.5 million dollars. I am sorry but I am not sure exactly who, but it was either Roger Hornsby, or Ty Cobb. Please email me who it was if you know, and I will get it in the next newsletter.

 

On this floor was one very special memory. That had our beloved Beavers in a window case, acknowledging their incredible feat of winning two College World Series in a row. I made sure every one around knew I was a Beaver fan.

The Hall of Fame also had Ichiro Suzuki honored, because of his record breaking year with 267 hits in one year. He has had over 200 hits in all all his seasons in the United States.

_____________________________________________________________

 

Well, I still didn’t get to Boston!! I will have to save that until the next newsletter. Don’t miss it. It has all the history that helped shape this country. The Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere’s home, JFK’s home, Harvard, the USS Constitution (Old Iron Sides) and some team called the Boston Red Sox.

 

Be sure to go up to the tab called, “Newsletter” if you haven’t already done so. Click on it and subscribe. Eventually that will be the only place you will get the Beaver Path Finder. You can opt out any time you want if you get tired of my ramblings.

 

OUT!!