The Bears were Denver's long-time minor league baseball team.
Denver, Colorado
Bruce Hellerstein loves baseball, and he really loves baseball ballparks, particularly those built in the early 20th century, such as Boston's Fenway Park and Chicago's Wrigley Field. He told us that in second grade he made his parents take him to see the ballpark of the local minor league baseball club, the Denver Bears. "I wanted to see the stadium more than the team," he said. "I can't explain it. It was like a calling."
Food vendor relics at the National Ballpark Museum.
Years passed. Bruce remained infatuated but frustrated, since he couldn't figure out how to make other people as enthusiastic about ballparks as he was. And the old stadiums, the ones he loved, were being torn down.
"I went to one of these personal growth classes; I was about 30 at the time," Bruce recalled, "and they said, 'Close your eyes and picture your paradise.' Well, that was easy. It wasn't lakes or mountains; it was ballparks."
Inspired, Bruce began to collect ballpark artifacts -- bricks, seats, signs, tickets, programs, turnstiles, light fixtures, vending paraphernalia, usher uniforms -- and in 2012 he opened the National Ballpark Museum. It's just across the street from Denver's 1990s ballpark, Coors Field, whose retro-style main entrance was designed that way thanks to a suggestion from Bruce.
The old ballparks, Bruce said, made baseball games more memorable and exciting because they were fit onto odd-shaped lots in city neighborhoods. One of the museum's prized artifacts is a piece of The Green Monster: a towering metal barrier that's part of the outfield wall at Fenway Park. "It wasn't put there on a whim by some crazy architect," Bruce said. "It was there to keep balls from flying out onto the street." The section in the museum is small, but it has dents from 96 baseball impacts. Some were hit so hard that you can see the seams on the balls.
"Gate B" is a tribute to museum founder Bruce Hellerstein.
17-year-old Jackie Mitchell, "the girl who struck out Babe Ruth."
Other parts of old ballparks collected by Bruce include fragments of their architecture -- embellishments in terra-cotta, glass, and bronze -- that show how much care went into making them temple-like shrines to what was then America's unquestioned number one sport.
"They've always been the equal of the game itself," Bruce said of the old ballparks, admiration in his voice. "They're treasures, national treasures."
The museum's exhibits fill a 2,000-square-foot former store in a 19th century building. "They had to squeeze those old ballparks into neighborhoods and I had to squeeze this museum into this space," Bruce said. "People tell me, 'I wish the museum was larger.' I say, 'Well, now you know what it was like in a classic ballpark.'" Visitors can get some sense of it by sitting in one of the museum's many century-old stadium seats, clearly built for a time when fans were smaller and unfazed by crowded urban spaces. "They were like sardines in those ballparks," said Bruce, "like practically in each other's laps."
The museum collection is arranged ballpark by ballpark. In addition to memorabilia from what are considered to be the 14 "classic" stadiums, Bruce has a separate section devoted to more modern ballparks, an entire room devoted to the Denver Bears baseball team, and varying exhibits such as one on 17-year-old Jackie Mitchell, "the girl who struck out Babe Ruth" when she pitched for the Chattanooga Lookouts. Bruce told us that the collection is constantly in flux, so what's on display during one visit may not be there the next time.
Best seats in the house if you were a slim baseball fan 100 years ago.
"The biggest compliment I get from visitors is, 'You celebrate baseball,'" Bruce said. "That's the greatest thing I could ever hear."
St. Louis Sportsman's Park: built in 1909, torn down in 1966.
Bruce dislikes what he calls the "tip of the iceberg" approach taken by many museums. "I don't have fancy display cases; I'm not sure I even want them," said Bruce. "You stick something in a beautiful case and people look at it and say, 'That's nice.' I don't think that's very much fun." Instead, many of the artifacts exhibited in the National Baseball Museum can be touched, sat in, stood on. "We want to make you feel like you're at these ballparks, if we can," said Bruce.
Bruce tries to be in the building as often as possible to greet people and to share information. Personal tours for every visitor, he said, are an important part of the museum. "You can see the item and hear the story about how it was obtained and what it represents," Bruce said. "It's not just a piece of whatever. It's an emotional tie to the thing, the human interest part that people can relate to."
The National Ballpark Museum may be viewed by some as a niche attraction, but Bruce told us that he's amazed at how many people are now just like him: fascinated by the places where people have played, and still play, baseball. "The number of people that are into ballparks -- that visit ballparks -- just blows me away," he said. "They go all over the country. They come here. They love this stuff!"