Cooperstown journey priceless

Richard and Kevin Moles fulfill a dream, and Craig Muder, a former Star Beacon sports editor helps make it even better

TOM HARRIS

One day 20 years ago, Richard Mole and his son, Kevin, were in the garage talking baseball. Kevin asked about Rickey Henderson, his baseball idol. Is he a good player? Will he make it to the Hall of Fame?

Richard Mole assured his son that Henderson was an outstanding ballplayer and almost certain to be honored in Cooperstown someday. “And when he gets there,” Richard told his son, “I’ll take you to the induction ceremony.”

In the years that followed, Kevin Mole graduated from Pymatuning Valley, Class of 1999; received his undergraduate degree from St. Bonaventure University, class of 2003; earned a master’s degree in education from Jones International University in 2007 and in the summer of 2008 was named the head baseball coach at Scio Central School in Scio, N.Y.

The promise made long ago, however, still stood. And this summer, on July 26, when Henderson was inducted into the Hall of Fame, Richard and Kevin Mole were there.

The Moles’ interest in sports is intense. In a way, sports sparked the romance between Richard and Kathy Mole.

“On our first date, we went to dinner,” Richard Mole said. “It was to settle a football bet. And then, halfway through dinner, Kathy starts talking about golf. I almost dropped my fork.”

In high school, Kevin lettered four times in baseball, playing for Lakers coach Steve “Skipper” Urchek. He also picked up three letters in golf as a member of coach Jeff Petrilli’s team. Combining those interests, Kevin and Richard Mole would head for Cooperstown every few years to visit the Hall of Fame and play a few rounds of golf at the nearby Leatherstocking Golf Course.

While there in 2007, Richard realized it was time to get down to business if he was going to keep his promise. Henderson’s 25-year playing career ended in 2003 — he was with the Dodgers at the time. The eligible members of the Baseball Writers Association of America would be able to vote for Henderson for the first time in 2008. If he received the votes of at least 75 percent of the members, which Mole thought likely, Henderson would be inducted 2009.

With that in mind, Richard Mole checked at the Hall of Fame Members’ Service Desk. Acting on the advice he received, Mole joined the Hall of Fame’s President’s Circle, with his membership beginning the day after the 2008 induction. The $500 membership was good for a year and included two tickets for the 2009 induction ceremony. Then Kathy Mole arranged lodging for her husband and son Oneonta, N.Y, about a 25-minute drive from Cooperstown.

The rest was in the hands of the baseball writers. There was nothing the Moles could do but wait until Jan. 6 of this year, when the results of the voting were announced.

“I checked the Internet about 2 p.m. that day and found that Henderson had easily made it in,” Richard Mole said. “The other player to make it was Jim Rice. It was Henderson’s first year of eligibility and Rice’s last.”

As a lifelong Indians fan, Richard Mole was delighted by the announcement made a few weeks earlier that the Veterans Committee had elected Joe Gordon to the Hall of Fame. Gordon, who played for the Yankees and Indians, was involved in one of the more bizarre trades in baseball history. In 1960, when he was the Indians manager, Gordon was traded to the Detroit Tigers for their manager Jimmy Dykes.

“That’s the only time teams ever traded managers,” Mole said.



A magic place

At the dawn of the 20th Century, Henry Chadwick, a baseball writer, contended that baseball was a descendent of the English game of rounders. The mere suggestion that baseball carried the shame of English parentage was too much for Albert Spalding, one of baseball’s premier pitchers in the 1870s and co-founder of the sporting goods company of the same name. At his urging, the Mills Commission was established 1905 to look into the origin of the national pastime.

In 1907, based largely on a letter from Abner Graves, who claimed to have been there at the time, the commission announced that the best evidence indicated that in 1839 at Cooperstown, Abner Doubleday laid out the first baseball diamond and set down the rules that turned “town ball” into baseball.

The best evidence, however, was a little flimsy. Doubleday, who fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumner in 1861, was a cadet at West Point in 1839. The only leave he received while a student at the Military Academy came in the summer of 1840. Doubleday was also an inveterate diarist, and nowhere in the 67 diaries he left behind does he mention inventing baseball. And Graves, who was 15 years younger than Doubleday, was but a tender five years old in 1839.

But whatever the truth, Cooperstown provides an idyllic setting for the Hall of Fame.

“As a town, Cooperstown doesn’t amount to much,” Craig Muder, the Director for Communication for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, said. “If it was in Ashtabula County, it wouldn’t even be a Jefferson. It’s more like a Rock Creek. There’s one stoplight, and five minutes outside of town you’re surrounded by cows.

“But the Hall of Fame is a real window on the world.”

Muder joined the Star Beacon sports staff in 1991 and became the paper’s sports editor in 1994. He left the Star Beacon in December, 1997 to become the sports editor of the Utica (N.Y.) Observer-Dispatch, where he remained until he assumed his present position in 2008.

“Utica is about 45 minutes from Cooperstown, but it’s the only city of any size in the area, and we covered the Hall of Fame a lot. It was one of my beats,” Muder said. “I got to know some of the PR guys. In 2008, there was some turnover, which is pretty unusual for the Hall of Fame, and they talked to me about the job.”

Muder’s duties include preparing press releases, overseeing the production of the Hall of Fame’s magazine and keeping the Web site updated. It was the latter function that brought Richard Mole into contact with Muder, and turned what would have been a special trip into something extraordinary.

“A couple of weeks before we left for Cooperstown, I noticed an article written by Craig Muder on the Hall of Fame Web site,” Richard Mole said. “I emailed him and asked if he was the Craig Muder who once worked for the Star Beacon. He said he was, and told me to let him know if we were ever going to be in Cooperstown.”

Mole told Muder of his plans. And when the Moles arrived on the Thursday before the induction ceremony, Muder took them on a personal tour of the Hall of Fame and handed them upgraded tickets for the induction ceremony, giving them seats in the third row of the press section.

The Moles kept a hectic schedule in Cooperstown. On Thursday, among other things in addition to their tour, Richard and Kevin stood in line from 2:40 to 4:10 in the afternoon to get Yogi Berra’s autograph. Then they played a round at Otsego Golf Course, one of the 10 oldest golf courses in the country.

On Friday, the Moles took part in the Ozzie Smith and Friends event, in which the participants took ground balls from Smith, Eddie Murray, Harmon Killebrew and Wade Boggs.

“We were ushered into Doubleday Field and given hats and name badges,” Richard Mole said. “The announcer introduced us as we ran on to the field and shook hands with the Hall of Famers, and then we lined up for the National Anthem. I wasn’t prepared for all that.”

Kevin Mole went to the post office Saturday morning and met Rickey Henderson’s brother. Later at an autograph session — “it was like baseball cards come to life,” Richard Mole said — he and Kevin met Gaylord Perry, Joe Morgan, Brooks Robinson and Paul Molitor.

Rubbing elbows with the game’s greatest players isn’t unusual in Cooperstown, but it is never a mundane experience, even for the people who work at the Hall of Fame.

“You get to know the guys, but it’s always a surprise,” Muder said. “One day, I was walking down the hall and Jim Rice is coming the other way and calls me by name. That’s a rush.

“Then I went into my office, and there’s Yogi Berra. It’s just surreal. This is a special place, and I’m blessed to be able to work here.”

Thanks to their upgraded tickets, Kevin and Richard Mole were able to have much the same experience at the induction ceremony.

“We’re sitting there during the ceremony and Kevin pokes me,” Richard Mole said. “He says, ‘Isn’t that Bob Ryan (sports writer for the Boston Globe)?’ I told him it was. Then he pokes me again. ‘Isn’t that Brian Cashman (the Yankees general manager)?’ This was getting a little too much for me. But then I poked him and said, ‘Isn’t that Doris Kearns Goodwin (historian and author of ‘Wait Till Next Year: Summer Afternoons with My Father and Baseball’)?’”

It was, and when he had a chance, Kevin approached Goodwin and asked her to sign a baseball.

“She giggled about someone asking for her autograph,” Richard Mole said. “But, of course, she signed it.”

“That’s the beauty of baseball,” Muder said. “It has the ability to connect the generations.”

There were 21,000 people at the induction ceremony. Cooperstown has a permanent population of around 2,000. And the Hall of Fame attracts 300,000 visitors annually.

“I wouldn’t trade my 17 years in the newspaper business for anything,” Muder said. “I can still remember the football games, the track meets, the excitement of the events I covered in Ashtabula County.

“But this is my dream job. It’s so perfect — combining my love of baseball with my abilities as a writer and editor. It’s a neat situation.”

And Cooperstown was the perfect spot for Richard and Kevin Mole to spend five days.

“I’ve been very lucky to be involved in sports and to witness some memorable events,” Richard Mole said. “But the most profound experience was going to Cooperstown with Kevin for the induction weekend.”



Harris is a freelance writer from Ashtabula Township.

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