Cooperstown Dreams Park is a youth
baseball tournament, that is held
in
Cooperstown, NY. Children aged 12 or younger
stay in clubhouses at the field complex for 7 days, the last couple
of days being days for playoffs. Each week during the summer 96
teams come and play in the tournament, the winners receiving a
trophy. All players,
coaches and umpires are inducted into the American Youth Baseball
Hall of Fame and receive the coveted youth hall of fame
ring.
Cooperstown Dreams Park is the chance of a lifetime for
young boys who love the game of baseball. It is a time to play the
game in the historic village of Cooperstown, bond with your family,
and hangout with your friends. The cool thing for kids is parents
are not allowed in their sleeping and actvity center (the baseball
village), only outside of this area where the fields are located.
The kids are given freedom that most of them are not used to and
they take it in stride. Each team plays seven random play-in games
and then seeded into a 96-team bracket. The 06-team single
elimination tournament starts Wednesday afternoon and continues to
Thursday morning with the Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final 4 and a
culmination of fireworks with the weekly championship game.
The
experience at
Cooperstown Dreams Park is mainly not
baseball: it is the hall of fame, the pin trading, and the freedom.
the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (no affiliation with
MLB) is what kids who love baseball can spend hours looking through
and have to be ushered out just to leave. It is basically a
baseball museum that has too much history to actually look through
completely.
My brother's team is playing there this summer.