Which Cap Will You Wear to Your Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony?
A reflection on the meaning of home.
Allow me to pose a hypothetical question to you. I say hypothetical, because there are only 341 members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (“MLB Hall”), in Cooperstown, New York, and 371 members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame (“NFL Hall”), in Canton, Ohio, and the odds that you will enter one of these two prestigious halls of fame, even if you are a superb athlete, is very slim. These are indeed two very elite fraternities - even Pete Rose can’t become a member, and he logged a whole lot of hits during his baseball career (4,256 hits, for those of you keeping score at home).
Why have I ignored the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the Hockey Hall of Fame, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada? Well, those two halls include 448 members, and 482 members, respectively - clearly not as elite as the other two halls, and I’m trying to make a point here. I mean, with a bit of public relations campaign work, even I might be able to be inducted into one of these two halls. And, as Groucho Marx said, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
Are there other halls of note? Scoutlife.org highlights a few of the lesser-known halls of fame (scoutlife.org is the website associated with “. . .the publisher of Boys Life since 1911,” so you know it is the “go-to” resource regarding halls of fame), including: the National Inventors Hall of Fame; the National Toy Hall of Fame; The International Towing & Recovery Hall of Fame & Museum (hey, when you’re stuck on the side of the road, you certainly do appreciate the artistry that a hall-of-famer brings to the table); the World Kite Museum and Hall of Fame; the Pinball Hall of Fame (I wonder if “that deaf, dumb, and blind kid” has been enshrined); and the Hall of Flame Museum of Firefighting (no, that’s not a typo, that’s a clever play on words executed by the firefighter group - well-played, firefighters, well-played, indeed!).
In any event, the hypothetical question is this: If selected for induction into one of the two prestigious halls of fame detailed above, which team’s cap would you select to represent you in the hall?
I should point out that I am exercising a modicum of artistic license here, inasmuch as the MLB Hall invites input from the inductee regarding which team’s baseball cap will be reflected on the head of his plaque depiction in the hall, but the decision is made collaboratively with Hall officials; and over at the NFL Hall, newly inducted members are not asked to name a team which they intend to represent, nor does the Hall assign a team name to them - perhaps the Pro Football Hall of Fame should be rechristened the “Pro Football (Team-Agnostic) Hall of Fame.”
Interestingly, fully sixty-six MLB Hall members do not sport a team’s cap on their plaque (nearly 20% of the total), driven not only by agnosticism, but also by lack of affiliation, such as team executives, umpires, Negro League legends, and also by artistic decisions, such as a player appearing in profile, which doesn’t show the cap’s logo, or a blank cap, or a cap-less rendering (most typically old-time players from the 1800’s). One of the non-affiliated members is Yogi Berra, who, even my two-year-old granddaughter knows was connected to the Yankees - perhaps Yogi, who was the king of malapropisms, decided that, “two heads are better than one, and no one has designed a two-headed hat.” (Ed. note: There’s no evidence that Yogi ever uttered that phrase, but he did say, ‘I never said most of the things I said.’)
I believe that I would wear a Chicago Cubs cap if inducted into the MLB Hall, because I was born, and spent thirty-six-and-a-half of my formative years in the Chicago area (all of those years lived north of Madison Street, which, as any self-respecting Chicagoan knows, demarcates the line between Cubs fans and White Sox fans - my mother’s baseball allegiance to the White Sox notwithstanding). And, I logged many of my hits there. We have lived in some terrific places since, including Philadelphia, Detroit, Toledo and Pittsburgh, but, when asked where I’m from, inevitably, it’s Chicago that I report.
The challenge for my children, who were all born while we lived in the Chicago area (north of Madison Street), but who also lived in Philadelphia, and Detroit (some of them), and who now live in other parts of the country, is, how they would respond to that question - where is home for them?
I wonder at times if I have done my kids a disservice by moving every five years or so - depriving them of a touchstone to call home. And, I hope they accept my apologies, if that vagabondism has resulted in excessive therapy-time for them. But, I also believe that our movement provided them with exposure to different sets of people and cultures to which they might not otherwise have been exposed (ex. authentic Philly cheesesteaks).
I have an old friend who has lived on the same street in the Chicago area, within three houses of each other, for all of his sixty-four years - he bought his grandmother’s house at some point in time, and moved directly there from his parents’ house, two doors away; his cap decision will be relatively easy, I imagine.
Although my friend’s home stability definitely skews the average downward, my thirteen different homes over the course of my lifetime is only a slight upward tick, according to fivethirtyeight.com, which has calculated that a typical American will move 11.7 times in his/her life, begging the question: When I seek my buddy’s help on moving day, am I on solid ground only offering him 4.2 beers, rather than the full six-pack, and 70% of a large pizza, for helping me move, if he’s already assisted me during the previous 11 moves?
Reader Interaction Opportunities
Do you feel compelled to offer your two cents on this column’s topic? Feel free, free, free to do just that right here.
Hey! If you enjoyed this column, why not subscribe now? That way, you’ll never miss the latest Rule of Three offering. And, it’s free, free, free!
Or, perhaps you’d like to share this column with a friend. Also, free, free, free!
Or, perhaps you’d like to provide a point of entry to that friend to the entire world of Rule of Three. Yep, you guessed it, free, free, free!
Another good one Bill. Nice call-out to CVB too. My total (executed rental agreement or mortgage) is 19, and I hope not “and counting”. There are also several interim stays pushing that number north of 20.
Please produce the monkeys column , etfsoons.