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Baseball Hall takes its game on road

© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 9, 2001

ST. PETERSBURG -- Babe Ruth's bat, Shoeless Joe Jackson's shoes and Jackie Robinson's jersey are coming to town.

About 500 exhibits from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., will come to the Florida International Museum in St. Petersburg during a first-of-its-kind nationwide tour of some of the Hall's most prized baseball artifacts.

The Hall of Fame announced the four-year, 10-city tour on Thursday, but baseball fanatics in the Tampa Bay area will have to wait a while before they lay eyes on the bat Roger Maris used to hit his 61st home run.

The traveling collection won't reach St. Petersburg for two years. It is scheduled to be housed in the downtown museum from December 2003 to March 2004.

This is a first for the Baseball Hall of Fame, which is tucked away in a village in upstate New York. In the past, it has allowed only a few baseball artifacts at a time to be shown at other locations such as Grand Central Terminal in New York City.

"Cooperstown is a magical place, but it's also a difficult place to get to," Hall president Dale Petroskey said. "We want to tell the story of the game and take it around the country."

The Florida International Museum has been working on attracting the traveling collection.

Dick Johnston, the museum's president, could not be reached for comment Thursday because he was flying back from New York after attending the Hall of Fame's star-studded announcement ceremony for the tour.

But Johnston was reportedly enthusiastic about the baseball exhibit.

"He's thrilled," said his wife, Linda.

The St. Petersburg museum is known chiefly for its John F. Kennedy collection, the largest in the world. The museum has suffered from declining attendance and has been bringing in other exhibitions to broaden its appeal.

The baseball exhibition will take up about 5,500 square feet in the 70,000-square-foot museum.

The traveling collection -- about 1 percent of the Hall of Fame's artifacts -- includes the Doubleday baseball, supposedly used in the first game in 1839; a ball from Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series; and a 1908 recording by Thomas Edison of Casey at the Bat. It includes record-setting bats from the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run chase of 1998; Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1942 "Green Light" letter calling for the continuation of pro baseball during World War II; and a Honus Wagner baseball card, one of the most valuable in the world.

Petroskey, the Hall of Fame president, said he expected 4- to 5-million people to see the exhibition, which would make it more popular than the King Tut, van Gogh and Monet collections that toured museums in recent years.

The touring exhibition, titled "Baseball as America," will start in March at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It will then go to Los Angeles, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Petersburg, Washington, D.C., St. Louis, and three other sites to be announced.

Seven members of the Hall of Fame announced plans for the tour at the Natural History Museum on Thursday.

"Cooperstown is a very, very good place, and I'm glad that a lot more fans will get to see what they have there," said former Kansas City Royals third baseman George Brett.

"I grew up in California and never got a chance to go as a kid," said Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan. "You can't write about the history of this country without baseball. And now, a lot more people will get to see important pieces of the game." Lou Brock, Carlton Fisk, Mike Schmidt, Larry Doby and Orlando Cepeda spoke at the ceremony as well.

- This report used information from The Associated Press.

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