The REAL Baseball Hall of Fame opened July 4th, 2020, in mid-town Manhattan, and for a while the press had great fun with the sophomoric rendering of "real" in capitals, but eventually everybody got used to that. The brainchild of long-retired superstars Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, REALHOF (as it came to be known) occupied the first ten floors of what was once the "Bear Stearns World Headquarters," easily accessible to many who likely would have brushed away the whiff of irony even had they smelled it.
The premise behind REALHOF was simple enough: The numbers are the numbers. Indeed, directly under the three-foot high, always-on LED sign identifying The REAL Baseball Hall of Fame, over its main entrance, were the foot-high legends:
NUMBERS ARE NUMBERS.
HERE ARE ALL OUR STARS.
The foundation of those simple declarations were only slightly more complicated. First, the generation that had followed the stars of the so-called Golden Era of the game, those who cheered for Mays, Mantle, the Robinsons, Aaron, Clemente, and Gibson were either dead, dying, or roughly seventy to seventy-five years old. Second, since 2011 only five players had been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York: Greg Maddux, Ken Griffey, Jr., Omar Vizquel, Jim Thome, and Chipper Jones. Albert Pujols would be eligible in 2021, Chase Utley in 2023. Third, in five separate years no one had been inducted, and that seriously depressed everybody who loved the game. This depression was fueled, at times, by the very (ancient) sportswriters who refused to vote in the "tainted players" from the Steroid Era of the game, roughly 1985-2010. Their articles had titles like "Another NO for Bonds" and "Gloom Shrouds 2016 Ballot." Against the keepers of the Cooperstown gate, however, stood millions and millions of fans who had paid truckloads of money to watch the cheats of the tainted days and did not care a whit about what they had put into their bodies. The average fan in the street instinctively "understood" that no drug creates the reflexes or hand-eye coordination necessary to hit a 97 mph cut fastball.
Also, unlike Cooperstown, it didn't hurt that REALHOF wasn't a four-hour drive away from, well, just about everywhere.
Oh, there were incidents early on. On July 5th, 2020, 101-year-old Bob Feller led a march on REALHOF, and there was an uncomfortable moment when he came face to face with an over-muscled youngster in the employ of Blackwater Urban Security. BUS was out in force out front before the fairly ancient crowd of about 1000 had come within a block of the site.
The guard in question had learned his stuff, though - like all Blackwater guards at the museum, he knew what Feller looked like, even at 101. (There was a test before employment was offered. Applicants were given two weeks to cram.) Faced with the ancient fireballer, he simply said, "Mr. Feller, it's good to see you. Your admission is free, of course. Since your friends have come with a Hall of Famer, they will receive five dollars off the regular admission price."
Feller blinked and retreated a half block with march's other organizers, who scratched their bald heads, then finally decided to send in a delegation to see "what kind of disgraces are in there." The delegation was led by the best singles hitter ever, Rod Carew. The great Carew moved slowly, pretty erectly, but with a cane, toward the entrance.
He would never admit to anyone that he was slightly grateful for the discounted admission.
Between them, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens had made, of course, over $200 million on the field of play alone, and such deep pockets made various possibilities realities. First and foremost, they weren't revealed as the money behind the project until 2032 - this is why the term "shell corporation" exists - and by then their "baby" had been widely hailed by both the tainted players and the public, the latter of whom voted with their feet and money. Moreover, All the Stars, Inc., the parent company, had touched all the bases, as defined by very expensive public relations consultants.
