Eric Carra reports:

I'm happy to say that I attended the "Not-quite-as-grand-as-the-previous-night-but-pretty-darn-grand" Opening of the "Baseball as America" exhibit at the Chicago Field Museum on Wednesday, 2/5/03. A relative is a "Friend of the Museum," and got special tickets for it (the previous night was THE Grand Opening, with hall-of-famers, etc).

The Field Museum always does these things up right. They served honest-to-gosh baseball food (hot dogs, popcorn, nachos and the like) beforehand, had a very good speaker (according to my cousin; I didn't attend the speech. I could have given the speech, by all accounts), and then, of course, there was the exhibit itself.

Baseball Heaven. From the "Doubleday Ball" (a lot smaller than we're used to) to a Babe Ruth Celebriduck, just about anything you could imagine was there. I walked around the exhibit with a goofy grin on my face.

The exhibit is self-guided, so you can take your time on the topics that interest you, and it's set up so that each area is self-contained, without being confining. Over here, advertising and endorsements involving players. Around the corner, Jackie Robinson and the breaking of the color barrier. Just past that, evolution of baseball equipment (I got to explain just why Steve Yeager invented the flap under the catcher's mask to a rapt audience).

Interspersed you come across video monitors with informative and entertaining films. By far the best was baseball in the entertainment field, from "Casey at the Bat" to Bugs Bunny, Charlie Brown to "Field of Dreams."

It was hands-on, as well. There were examples of bat weights through the ages (how Ruth swung his bat is a mystery to me... my wrists ache just thinking about trying to check my swing with it), and an clever device that showed rotation on various pitches.

Simply an incredible experience, it was. Short of actually going to Cooperstown, I can't imagine a better museum display. I'm sure it'd be even better during the season, when you could go to the museum, spend a few hours there, then go catch a game, to boot... which I fully intend to do.