Molitor does walk-through for Hall of Fame …
http://www.startribune.com/stories/509/4753026.html
Molitor does walk-through for Hall of Fame induction
Jim Souhan, Star Tribune
May 1, 2004
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. -- Paul Molitor, taking a private tour of the Hall of Fame
on Friday, entered a basement vault stuffed with treasures. He reached
tentatively toward a bat, then pulled back his hand as if the old Cooper Pro
100 were electrified.
"Can I touch it?" he asked.
That question is unusual only if your name is inscribed on the barrel, if it
was you who had donated the bat.
For Molitor and his wife, Destini, Friday was Orientation Day, an
introduction to Cooperstown and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
On July 25, Molitor will become the second St. Paul native and third former
Twin to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in the past four years, following
Dave Winfield and Kirby Puckett.
Before he read the inscriptions on their plaques, Molitor, now the hitting
coach with the Seattle Mariners, took a tour. To the lone reporter
accompanying Molitor, it felt akin to trailing Renoir at the Louvre, or
Einstein at the Smithsonian.
"I did hesitate to touch that bat," Molitor said later, sitting on the
veranda of the Otesaga Resort Hotel, looking across Lake Otsego. "This lady
has the white gloves on, and the last time I saw gloves like that was at
Cretin, when we had inspection and had to wear formal dress.
"You get down in that collector's area, and it's everything that transcends
generation to generation in this game, it's in there somewhere. And it's not
just baseball -- it's history."
Molitor, the Cretin and Gophers alumnus who finished his playing career with
the Twins, finds himself on the brink of entrance into what he calls "this
great fraternity."
Friday, he marveled at holding Babe Ruth's bat. He gripped another, once
swung by Twins great Harmon Killebrew, and surveyed the inscription. "Harmon
was my guy, growing up," he said. "Still the best autograph in the game."
In the basement vault, Molitor cradled one bat that looked like a telephone
pole, and another, used by Rabbit Maranville, that more closely resembled a
large Coke bottle.
This was CSI: Cooperstown -- a scientific hitter examining artifacts for
forensic evidence.
"To take a private tour, knowing you're going to join some of the greats in
this room, it's pretty overwhelming," Molitor said. "You find yourself a
little bit mesmerized by the surroundings. Everything from holding a Babe
Ruth bat -- not a copy, not just a bat with his name on it, but one he
actually used -- to seeing those old gloves that didn't even have fingers.
"To see things from generations gone by, knowing you're going to have a place
here, is pretty special."
Even as a player, Molitor displayed a keen appreciation for baseball history.
But he had visited Cooperstown only once, when his friend and former Brewers
teammate Robin Yount was inducted in 1999.
"That time, I really didn't have a chance to take a lot of time and look at a
lot of the artifacts and some of these things that inspire awe," he said.
In a section of the museum reserved for World Series highlights, Molitor
found the black Louisville Slugger he used to set a Series record with five
hits in a game in 1982.
"Every year, more than 300,000 people see that bat," said the museum's
president, Dale Petroskey.
As Petroskey offered commentary, Molitor displayed his own grasp of history,
describing the careers of Jackie Robinson, Thurman Munson and Cool Papa Bell
to Destini.
Before a picture of Munson, who died in a plane wreck in 1979, Molitor said:
"We played against them about a week before that happened. I'll always
remember him telling me, 'You keep doing what you're doing, kid; you're going
to be a good player."
Someone mentioned Bell, a Negro Leagues great, and repeated Bell's boast: He
could turn off the lights and be back in bed . . .
"Before it got dark," Molitor finished.
Spying a photo of Joe DiMaggio at the completion of his swing, Molitor nodded
and said, "That's my follow-through, isn't it? Look to left field, somehow
hit the ball to right."
At the end of his tour, Molitor entered the Hall of Fame. At the end of the
Hall is a rotunda where the first Hall of Fame class, including Ruth and Ty
Cobb, is enshrined, along with classes including Winfield and Puckett.
Molitor went straight to Winfield's likeness and pored over the inscription.
"All of this was great, but walking into this room is a whole different
feeling," Molitor said. "This was the first time since I've been in here
today that I've really had that extra vibration in the spine."
In less than three months, the kid from Cretin will have a plaque on the same
wall as Ruth.
"That's an impressive room, right there," Molitor said. "The sequential
formation of people who have been elected into that room, that building, this
fraternity of Hall of Famers . . . "
He looked at Destini and smiled. "That," he said, "was pretty cool."
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