Independence day-fiction blog 2

Independence Day by Richard Ford:
We walk a ways down the widening alley to the point behind the old brick buildings of Main, where it turns into the Doubleday Field parking lot and where several men-men my age- dressed in new-looking big-league uniforms are departing cars with their gloves and bats, hurrying on noisy cleats toward the open grandstand tunnel, as though they were showing up late for a twin bill.


In this the narrator is referring to Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, New York which is also the town that is home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. I have been fortunate enough to have played a baseball tournament up in Cooperstown and I also got to see the Hall of Fame there. To me this town was like heaven. It's out in the middle of the country and everything in Cooperstown is centered around one thing, baseball.
As for a little background on Doubleday Field. Doubleday refers to Abner Doubleday, the supposed creator of the great game that is baseball. Once a year during Induction Weekend, a time during the summer in which qualifying players are inducted in to the Hall of Fame, they play the Hall of Fame Game. This is one of the festivities to enliven Induction Weekend, but when this weekend is over Doubleday Field is reduced to being used by overaged men, who havent picked up a baseball in twenty years, are using a mitt that is older than that, and whose gatorade is spelled B-e-e-r. I just think its kind of sad that a field like that has to be used for games like that.