What's great about the Baseball Hall of Fame inductions, and what I assume is equally great about the Football Hall of Fame inductions, is that anyone can come. It's an outdoor celebration of baseball for which there is no admission fee. Bring a blanket, bring a lawn chair or just bring your very own bad self. And hope it doesn't rain, of course.

Things went smoothly in Cooperstown this past weekend. Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice were appropriately grateful and humble. Rickey was a first-ballot guy with 94 percent of the vote, an absolute no-brainer who ranks number one all-time in runs scored, stolen bases and, as they carefully point out now, first in "unintentional" walks, meaning he's second only to Evil Barry in walks, period.

Rice took a different route to Cooperstown. It has been decades since someone was voted in on the final year of eligibility. The only others were both pitchers. Dazzy Vance was a late-bloomer who didn't win a major league game until he was 31. He won 197, all but seven of them for the Dodgers, before hanging 'em up at age 44. His calling card was a blay-zah that enabled him to lead the league in strikeouts seven times (in succession) in ERA three times and in shutouts four times, all of this accomplished for relentlessly uninspired Dodger teams.

Was not winning 200 a voter hangup? Who knows? All we know is that he made it on the final try.

Red Ruffing may have been downplayed for another reason. His great years were with the great Yankee teams of the 30s and 40s, for whom he went 231-124 in the 16-year period between 1930 and 1946. That included four straight 20-win seasons from 1936-39, when the Yankees won four straight World Series.

Before, that, however, he spent parts of seven spectacularly unsuccessful seasons toiling for the dreadful Red Sox, who were the American League's worst team in the 20s. When he was mercifully acquired by the Yankees in the middle of the 1930 season, he had a lifetime record of 39-76. So perhaps people had reason to debate just how good he really was.

Anyway, it was a lengthy debate, as was Jim Rice's.

From what I gather, the locals regarded this as a typical Cooperstown induction weekend. The official crowd estimate was 21,000, which is 6,000 or so more than last year. But after what happened in 2007, all subsequent induction weekends will be pieces o' cake, if you know what I mean.

The 2007 weekend was the all-time blockbuster. The big inductees were Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn, and, with all due respect to the rotund batter extraordinaire, he was practically an afterthought. The Oriole people, who had distinguished themselves many years ago by their turnout for Brooks Robinson, showed up big-time for their beloved Cal.

The official estimate was 75,000, and if you have never been to Cooperstown, you simply cannot imagine the strain that put on a village with a permanent population in the neighborhood of 2000.

The locals will never get over it. All streets, not just Main Street (the main drag on which the Hall of Fame actually sits), but all streets, were clogged. If you've ever been to Bourbon Street on New Year's Eve, you can form the mental picture.

But this weekend was manageable. The preponderance of fans were there to support Rice, of course. Rickey is a bigger star, but he did play for nine teams, and that dilutes the idolatry. For the record, he is in wearing an A's hat, which, given that he played for them on four separate occasions, makes perfect sense.

I'm a big believer that you learn something every day, and the great eye-opener for me on Sunday was the speech by Joe Gordon's daughter, during which we learned that her dad could play classical violin, rope a steer, ride a bucking bronco, fish like crazy and even do a ventriloquist act! All this and turn a neat double play and driving in runs. Who knew?

I also learned that the Gordon family has Bobby Doerr to thank for his election by the Veterans Committee. I was chatting up two members of the committee at a social gathering on Saturday night, and they explained that the deciding moment in the last session was when Doerr, the Red Sox' Hall of Fame second baseman, stood up and said that he always admired Joe Gordon and often wondered if he were as good a ballplayer as Joe Gordon. And that, these two men said, was it. Gordon was in.

Weather is always an issue at an outdoor ceremony, and there were some scary moments. It was spitting rain for the first half hour or so, and umbrellas were useful. But the sun poked through about 2 p.m. or so, and we could all relax.

It's a well-run affair. Broadcaster George Grande has been doing the MC thing for 29 years, so he kinda knows what he's doing. Bud The Commish reads the plaques, and he did mess up a time or two, but it was not a catastrophe. Everyone got through his or her speech in the allotted time frame. Rickey later confessed that he had a page stuck and thus did not mention the names of his three daughters. Hey, anyone who has ever delivered a written speech can relate.

If you're a serious baseball fans, it is beyond cool seeing those 50 Hall of Famers up there on that stage. Willie Mays was the only one wearing a baseball cap, and I could not make out what the lettering was, only that it was neither "SF" nor "NY." I just hope he wasn't pulling a John Henry Williams and shilling for someone on this august occasion.

They all look pretty good, starting with 90-year-old Bob Feller. I won't embarrass the woman I sat next to by mentioning her name, but when they showed a nice close-up of the ever-dapper 73-year-old Sandy Koufax, she blurted out "He's hot!" Any time the mysterious Koufax shows up anywhere in public, it's a show-stopping event.

Speaking of events, it's always a big deal when Yaz pops up. True to form, as soon as Jim Rice made his speech, he was outtathere. I'm sure he couldn't get out of that suit quickly enough. The same was true, I suppose, of Ford Frick (Broadcast) Award winner Tony Kubek, who felt the need to inform us that, no, he had not purchased his suit for this occasion, but for his daughter's wedding two weeks ago. Tony is a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy, I guess.

The idea of baseball being invented by Abner Doubleday is a myth, of course. But it doesn't matter. Cooperstown is a beautiful slice of America, and any legit fan should put a Hall of Fame visit on his or her must-do list before heading off to that Big Ballpark In The Sky. Hall of Fame induction weekend is probably not the best time for a one-time visit. If you want to come then, fine, but it is crowded, and stores, restaurants and bars are jammed. You need to go there when you can move about more comfortably.

But you do need to go there.