By Craig Muder

You never know who’s going to show up in Cooperstown. Today, it was part of my childhood.

Bob Horner, who played 10 big league seasons with the Braves and Cardinals between 1978 and 1988, visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum on Wednesday with his wife Chris.

When the call came that Horner was arriving, I immediately flashed back to the day big league baseball became real for me: Sept. 3, 1978 – my first time at an MLB game.

Former big leaguer Bob Horner (right) holds one of his bats during a visit to the Museum on Wednesday. Horner used the bat during his four-home run game on July 6, 1986 and later donated it to the Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame curator of history and research John Odell gave Horner a tour of the Museum archive. (Milo Stewart Jr./NBHOF Library)

I was nine, and my father took me to Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh to see the Pirates play the Braves on a Sunday afternoon. Horner was the No. 1 overall pick in the June draft that year, and Horner was so good that he went straight from Arizona State to the majors – debuting with the Braves just 10 days after he was drafted.

I can remember debating with my dad about whether Horner might need minor league seasoning. Turns out, he didn’t – Horner hit 23 home runs that year in 89 games, quickly establishing himself as one of the game’s top young third basemen en route to winning the National League Rookie of the Year Award.

Eight years later, Horner tied a record that still stands. On July 6, 1986, Horner hit four home runs in one game for the Braves against the Montreal Expos. He later donated the bat he used for the first three of those home runs to the Hall of Fame (it broke before he could hit his fourth), and on Wednesday he got to hold it again.

Horner is one of only 16 players to ever hit four home runs in a big league game.

Horner got a tour of the archive Wednesday, and expressed genuine wonder while looking at a ball used during the 1927 World Series.

“Incredible… really incredible,” said Horner.

Horner and his wife now live in Dallas, and were passing through Central New York while on a family visit.

“We always try to stop when we’re here,” Horner said. “The history here is amazing.”

For me, it was living history – my own.

Craig Muder is the director of communications for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

By Bill Francis

The recently completed Seventh Annual Baseball Film Festival, held at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum last weekend, has attracted not only a loyal following among fans of the genre but also a growing number of filmmakers who’ve returned more than once to showcase their latest work.

Returning for the third time was documentary filmmaker Craig Lindvahl, who this past weekend was showing The Perfect Place, one of 14 films that made up this year’s festival, which uses the Cincinnati Reds to show how fans are connected to the game.

“This is a wonderful place to be,” Lindvahl said after the Saturday night showing of his film at the Hall’s Bullpen Theater. “It’s people who love baseball, who understand what we’re trying to say about baseball. It’s unbelievable to have a reason to be in the Hall of Fame. Not just as a visitor but to have a reason to be here. As a filmmaker or a storyteller you really hope that you’re striking a chord with people who understand what baseball is. There is no place in the world that is more the center of people who understand baseball that this building right here.

“I can’t think of anything that would be more exciting to me than to think I could come back. So hopefully the next film I work on might be accepted and we might find ourselves back here in a year.”

Brothers Nick and Colin Barnicle answer questions from the crowd during the Seventh Annual Baseball Film Festival (Bill Francis/NBHOF Library)

Brothers Nick and Colin Barnicle, sons of journalist Mike Barnicle, had a film accepted into the festival for a second consecutive year. Their entry, Polo Grounds, tells the story of the famed home of the New York Giants and the impact the area felt when the team left after the 1957 season.

“This is something that we’re trying to do every year. I don’t know if we’ll get there but we love coming up here, we love being a part of the Hall of Fame, and this film, I think, really fits,” said Nick Barnicle. “We were supposed to do other real work but we pushed it toward baseball, as usual, and tweaked it up to come up here, which is always on honor.

“It’s nice to see so many people committed to making not only documentaries but just films in general about baseball. We grew up around the game. We attempt to make our living telling stories about baseball. So it’s a thrill to meet other people who are doing the same thing.”

The festival’s closing film, Chasing 3000, was represented in Cooperstown by screenwriter/producer Bill Mikita, a first-time visitor to the Hall of Fame whose true story, about travelling with his brother to Pittsburgh in order witness Hall of Fame Roberto Clemente’s 3,000^th career hit, the film is based on.

“Growing up loving baseball, and with baseball such an important part my life, this really is a sacred place,” he said after his film’s Sunday afternoon showing. “And that it’s on the 40^th anniversary of Roberto Clemente’s 3,000^th hit is just incredible.

“My two passions are baseball and movies, and to have the two combined this weekend has been great.”

Bill Francis is a Library Associate at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

By Bill Francis

Only a few days from beginning a four-night stretch of sold-out shows at New York City’s famed Radio City Music Hall, members of the acclaimed group Bon Iver took time out from their busy schedule to tour the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum on Monday.

Senior Curator, Tom Shieber, gives members of the group Bon Iver (left to right: Reggie Pace, Carl Faber, Matt McCaughan, and Josh Sundquist) the backstory on some artifacts in the library. (Milo Stewart, Jr./NBHOF Library)

In town for a concert on Monday, members of Bon Iver (French pronunciation bo-nee-VAIR, meaning “good winter”),who earlier this year won the Grammy for Best New Artist and for Best Alternative Album for the self-titled Bon Iver, were given a behind-the-scenes tour of the institution. Whether it was viewing a Babe Ruth scrapbook, a ball from the 1927 World Series or a bat Ted Williams once cracked in frustration, the musicians seemed genuinely enthralled.

“It was amazing to just see the operations and how it works,” said drummer Matt McCaughan. “And to be up close with direct contact to these old artifacts and to see them firsthand was just incredible.

“It’s certainly one of those things that – even though I don’t necessarily follow baseball – it was one of those opportunities I didn’t see how you could not come. I don’t know when I’d be in Cooperstown next.”

According to trombonist Reggie Pace, he didn’t know what to expect in his visit to the Hall of Fame, “but it was really cool. I love seeing the history of things and this was really beautiful. After seeing the artifacts it’s like the history of America in a lot of ways.”

Pace was a big league baseball fan while growing up, lost interest in his high school years, but has recently been getting back into the game.

“I was a really big White Sox fan as a kid,” he said. “I was a card collector, and I remember opening a pack and being like like, ‘Robin Ventura. Oh my God!’”

Though he doesn’t have a big league team he follows regularly, McCaughan does attend games of the minor league Durham Bulls in the North Carolina city he now calls home.

“I don’t consider myself a historian but history is certainly an interest of mine,” he said. “And this was just one of those things where it didn’t even have to be baseball, as it is in this case, but you could have the Hall of Fame of anything and I’d want to come see it. In this case it just happened to be a very historic Hall of Fame.”

Bill Francis is a Library Associate at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

By Steve Light

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is so much more than a shrine to baseball’s best players, managers, executives and umpires. As a Museum, we preserve and share baseball’s history each and every day. That history includes the storied past of the major leagues, but it also reaches beyond that.

Baseball has a unique cultural connection to our nation’s past, and our collection of nearly 40,000 artifacts allows us to show visitors the emotional connections with baseball that Americans have made for over 150 years.

The ball made by David E. Wheeler with the note attached that read, “This Ball was made by David Edgerton Wheeler, the last one he made and used the last term of school he attended.”  (NBHOF Library)

Take for instance, this baseball – a fitting artifact to highlight given that today marks the 150^th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history and the event that led Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. This ball was made by David E. Wheeler in the late 1850s. Born in Ohio, at a young age Wheeler moved with his family to Independence, Iowa. He was the eldest of three sons in the Wheeler family, and in August of 1862, at the age of 20, he enlisted in the 27th Regiment of Iowa Volunteers. Less than a year later, Wheeler died of disease at Camp Jackson, Tenn., on March 27, 1863.

David’s younger brother, Jonathon Judson Wheeler, kept this baseball as a keepsake of his older brother, whom he idolized. J.J. placed a handwritten note on the ball that reads: “This Ball was made by David Edgerton Wheeler, the last one he made and used the last term of school he attended.” The younger Wheeler died in 1938, but the baseball remained with the family and part of the family’s lore. That same family lore tells us that David was gregarious, intelligent, and also a highly talented athlete.

In 2008, the great-grandson of Jonathon Judson Wheeler donated the baseball to the Museum. Today, this baseball allows us to reflect on how generations of families bonded together with baseball. It also reminds us of the tremendous sacrifices made by young soldiers during a challenging time in our nation’s history.

Steve Light is the manager of public programs at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

By Craig Muder

Eleven years ago today, I stood watching the TV in disbelief at the absolute horror taking place throughout our country. A former co-worker leaned over while watching the coverage of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and said: “This country will never be the same.”

I recoiled at that statement. Even at that low point, I sensed it was not true. Of all of America’s strengths, maybe its greatest is our ability to put the past behind us and move forward.

A promotional baseball found in the 9/11 debris donated by New York City fireman Vin Mavaro. (Craig Muder/NBHOF Library)

Weeks later, a New York City fireman named Vin Mavaro was cleaning up debris at Ground Zero. He came across a white, round object that he first thought was a piece of concrete. Unable to grasp exactly what it was – in the midst of so much destruction – he leaned down and picked up a baseball.

It was a promotional ball from a company named TradeWeb that had offices in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The ball had facsimile signatures from companies – like Goldman Sachs – that did business with TradeWeb. It was scratched and cut, but miraculously came through the attacks in one piece.

Mavaro said that when he held the ball, he flashed to his son’s Little League field – remembering better days.

“The ball’s nicked up, but it’s intact and it came through,” Mavaro said. “I feel the same about New York City, the Fire Department and the United States. We’re banged up, we took a hit, but we came through.”

Mavaro contacted the folks at TradeWeb, who told him that all of their employees had escaped the tower and that he could keep the ball, which had been sitting on a TradeWeb employee’s desk. After loaning it to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum for the Hall’s Baseball As America national tour, Mavaro changed the loan into a permanent donation in 2008.

At one of this country’s darkest hours, it was baseball that provided a ray of hope.

Craig Muder is the director of communications for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

By Bill Francis

Actor Michael Badalucco, a familiar face to fans of The Practice, the legal drama series that aired on ABC from 1997 to 2004, made a long-awaited second trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum on Friday.

“We were on our way to Buffalo and I said to my friend, ‘Let’s take the long way and let’s go to Cooperstown,’” said Badalucco during a break from checking out the Museum’s third-floor exhibits. “I haven’t been here since I was 11 years old, but it didn’t look anything like this. I’m a big baseball fan so I said let’s try and to get in there.

Actor Michael Badalucco standing in the Autumn Glory exhibit during his visit to the Hall of Fame on Friday. (Bill Francis/NBHOF Library)

“Of course I remember the Plaque Gallery, which looks like it has never changed, but seeing the Museum exhibits now is so insightful and appealing that you don’t want to leave. Being here is a great thrill. You come here and you learn things about these guys … you think you know them but you don’t really.”

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Badalucco, 57, grew up a fan of the New York Yankees and Mickey Mantle.

“My uncles were Yankees fans, but my father from Sicily wasn’t much into baseball,” he said. “I remember going to Yankee Stadium in the early ‘60s and being able to walk out on the field and see the monuments and the flagpole after the game.”

Before getting his big acting break as a regular on The Practice, portraying lawyer Jimmy Berluti, Badalucco had to work on his craft for a number of years much like a minor league ballplayer.

“Twenty years after I graduated from college (State University of New York at New Paltz) I got a steady job,” he said. “I got my degree in theater but instead of being a waiter I worked as a prop man because I could work on the sets. Yogi (Berra) says, ‘You can observe a lot by watching.’ And I did.

“So all those years I was on the sets of all kinds of big movies in New York and I watched how they directed, how people acted, what went on on the set, so when I finally got my break not only did I know what was going on, every aspect of moviemaking, but I learned to have a great respect for people behind the camera because they are as important as the people in front of it.”

Badalucco, who would eventually win the 1999 Emmy for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Berluti on The Practice, can next be seen on the Syfy channel.

“It’s my first monster movie (Heebie Jeebies) and it’s going to be on in February. I confront a seven-headed monster.”

Bill Francis is a Library Associate at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

By Bill Francis

With his son playing at a local baseball camp, former big league player Damion Easley had the perfect opportunity to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum for the first time.

“Playing so long,” Easley said Wednesday morning, “I’m surprised it took my 12-year-old son, Jayce, to bring me down here.”

A veteran of 17 big league seasons spent mostly with the California Angels and Detroit Tigers, Easley, who left the field following his 2008 campaign, enjoyed his greatest success as a power-hitting second baseman in the MotorCity in the late 1990s. Though his lone All-Star Game invite came in 1998, when he smacked 27 home runs and drove in 100, he finished his career with 1,386 hits, 163 homers, 114 stolen bases and a .253 batting average.

Former Major League player Damion Easley with John Odell, Curator of History and Research. (Bill Francis/NBHOF Library)

After a tour of the museum’s archives, Easley said, “I’m in awe. I’m a baseball traditionalist, diehard baseball fan, and just a fan of the game, and that was very impressive to see those artifacts and kinda relive my youth a little bit.”

Now 42 years old, the native of New York City moved at age 11 to California, where he was able to play baseball year-round.

“Early on baseball was my life,” Easley said. “As you grow and get older I have my wife and my kids and obviously they took over my heart. But I still love the game.

“My dad introduced me to the game at a very young age and I took it and ran with it. It’s still a passion of mine. I coach it and I can’t get enough of it. I’ve coach at the youth, high school and pro side now.”

Calling Glendale, AZ home, Easley is currently a coach with the San Diego Padres’ affiliate in the rookie Arizona League.

“I enjoy working with the young guys who don’t know what it takes yet. They think they do but they really don’t,” Easley said. “And I’m sure I was that way coming up, too. But I enjoy working with them and helping them along.”

Helping Easley along in his professional career was Hall of Famer Rod Carew, the young infielder’s first batting coach when he got to the big leagues. But he also played against many of the Hall of Famers elected recently, a fact that makes his trip to Cooperstown even more meaningful.

“It helps you appreciate some of the greatness that you’ve been around because when you’re playing you don’t have time to think about it,” he said. “You admire somebody for his talents but you’re out there trying to compete and trying to survive and you don’t have time to be in awe of somebody.

“Now that you’re away from it you can sit back, relive the moments, and think, ‘Man, this was really special to live a dream and rub elbows with greatness.’”

Bill Francis is a Library Associate at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum