As Ken Burns' marathon "Baseball" series enters its fourth night on PBS, viewers are dividing into two camps: those who are fascinated and yearn for more, and those who are having trouble staying awake.
For those who yearn for more, there's plenty out there.
Even for the novice researcher, getting an overview of the game's history is easy. Living in Baltimore, you've got a leg up on the competition. One of the finest baseball museums in the country is just a long foul ball away from Oriole Park at Camden Yards; Little League heroes are celebrated in a small town in north-central Pennsylvania and baseball's most revered shrine is only a six-hour drive away, in a little town worth every minute of the trip.
In fact, of the country's major baseball museums, only the newest -- the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. -- is not within easy driving distance.
Starting right here in Charm City, the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Baseball Center, at 216 Emory St., offers extensive exhibits -- and research material -- on baseball's greatest player and (if you're from around here) its greatest team.
The casual visitor can see the room where Ruth was born in 1895, a slew of autographed bats and balls and even the hymnal he used during his years at St. Mary's Industrial School in Baltimore, which is now Cardinal Gibbons High School. The book is inscribed in pencil, "George H. Ruth, World's worse singer, World's best pitcher."
The house also features plenty of Orioles memorabilia, including the Hanlon Cup, commemorating the Orioles' 1894 and 1944 championships; the 1983 World Series trophy and a ball scorched by the fire that destroyed old Oriole Park in 1944.
Stored in acid-free boxes in a basement storage area not open to the public are game programs dating to 1895; scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings and photographs; scorecards kept by reporters for The Sun and the now-defunct News American of every Orioles game from 1954 to the present, and several panoramic team shots, including one of the 1921 International League Orioles.
About 170 miles north of Baltimore, in Williamsport, Pa., the Little League Museum spotlights the organization that started with three teams in this small Pennsylvania town and has since grown to include 2.5 million young players in more than 80 countries.
The museum has exhibits on the league's history, hands-on exhibits for kids, and a Hall of Excellence honoring distinguished Little League alumni such as golfer Hale Irwin, former Vice President Dan Quayle and ex-Orioles right-hander Jim Palmer.
The museum also has a rotating-display case that currently features mementos of Orioles pitcher Mike Mussina's career with Johnny Z's Little League team in Montoursville, Pa. The exhibit includes a baseball card 11-year-old Mike drew for himself and newspaper accounts of a July 22, 1981, game in which he struck out 17 of 18 batters and notched his ninth Little League no-hitter.
Researchers can call curator Alan Robison for an appointment to check out the archives downstairs, which contain programs from Little League World Series dating to 1947. But the real prize of these archives is contained in dozens of boxes stacked several feet high: hundreds of rosters of Little League teams.
Look hard, and you may find rosters with names like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Seaver, Sen. Bill Bradley, Mike Ditka, Tom Selleck, Boog Powell (the first person to play in both the Little League and Major League World Series), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and actor Kurt Russell.
And since girls have been playing Little League softball since 1974, it shouldn't be long before the names of some famous women start popping up on those rosters too.
Baseball's biggest shrine, the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., is a little more of a trek. But even the casual fan will find the trip worthwhile, and if you're doing serious research into the grand old game, Cooperstown must not be missed.
Ken Burns and his staff made five trips to the hall while putting together "Baseball," ranging in length from one to five days. Cooperstown's fingerprints are all over the series.
The Hall of Fame features three floors of exhibits on everything from Babe Ruth to baseball cards, Hank Aaron to sheet music, the World Series to the minor leagues, no-hitters to the longest game ever played.
But if you want to research baseball's history, you'll think you've died and gone to heaven.
Your first stop should be the library, home to more than 300,000 black and white photos, plus another 30,000 to 50,000 color slides.
Babe Ruth is the sultan of the photo files, says department manager Patricia Kelly, with over 1,100 photos stored in 20 folders. Joe DiMaggio takes up 19 files, Hank Aaron nine and Brooks Robinson four, while some of the older Hall of Famers may be confined to one folder -- like 19th-century great Cap Anson.
If numbers are your focus, the Hall has file cabinets brimming with statistical information -- box scores going back to the mid-1800s and newspaper clippings on just about everyone who ever played the game. Even Dave Criscione, who caught for the Orioles for a couple weeks in the '70s, has a file.
Two resources stand out: index cards that track every player who ever signed a minor or major league contract, and biographical sketches filled out by the players or their closest surviving relative.
Pull Lou Gehrig's sheet, and you'll find a piece of paper filled out by his widow, Eleanor. Her husband died, she notes, of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis -- a condition popularly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. In answer to the questions, "What was his first year of professional baseball?" and "What was his last year of professional baseball?" she responds simply, "Look in any record book."
You'll also discover Brooks Robinson attended Woodruff and Pulaski Heights elementary schools in Little Rock, Ark., and Cal Ripken Jr.'s proudest moment in baseball -- at least when he filled out the form in September 1981 -- was when he hit three home runs in a game.
For a real treat, try and schedule a meeting with Registrar Peter P. Clark, who oversees the storage rooms.
Nowhere else can you pull a glove off a shelf and be told it was the one Lou Gehrig wore in his last game, or swing a bat Jim Rice used to hit his 301st home run (Rice apparently had other plans for his 300th) or hold a baseball thrown by Tom Seaver in his 15th Opening Day start, a major league record.
You can call the Babe Ruth Museum at 727-1539. The Little League Museum can be reached at (717) 326-3607. To do research at the Baseball Hall of Fame, call (607) 547-2123 for the photo archives, (607) 547-0333 for the audio-visual department and (607) 547-2101 for other materials. The main number is (607) 547-7200.
'BASEBALL' SCORE CARD
In the first two innings, Ken Burns' nine-part series "Baseball" helped improve the score for public television, more than doubling its average prime-time audience, said Dara Goldberg, a PBS publicist. But "Baseball" isn't coming close to the home run whacked by Burns' 1990 series on the Civil War.
In direct comparisons of the same 24 national markets, "Baseball" scored a 5.6 Nielsen rating on its first night, according to PBS, compared with a 9 rating for "The Civil War" on the night the series began in September 1990. The 24-market figures for the second installment of each show are 4.9 for "Baseball"; 8.7 for "The Civil War."
The rating refers to the number of households with televisions that were tuned to the program, with each point representing 954,000 households.