COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. It isn't easy to get here. You really have to want it. Some fly on jets to Albany and drive east, over mountains and through valleys. Some come from thousands of miles to visit for a single afternoon. A precious few never ever leave the place.

It took 18 seasons and 3,010 hits, but Wade Boggs got here, and here he'll always be. Today, he belongs to two towns.

You roll down to pristine Otsego Lake. Near the lake is the picture postcard where the first -- and best -- sports hall of fame lives, where the population swells from 2,000 to 30,000 the last weekend of every July. The village of Cooperstown was founded in 1786 by William Cooper, father of James Fenimore Cooper, America's first novelist. That's history, too.

But we were lured here under false pretenses. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was opened in Cooperstown on the grounds that the game was invented here by another resident, Abner Doubleday.

"It wasn't invented here. It wasn't invented anywhere. It just evolved," said Ted Spencer, the Hall's chief curator. He has worked in Cooperstown for 23 years. He was born in Quincy, Mass. He is named for Ted Williams.

Spencer sat outside the Hall one morning. It's right on Main Street, the kind of Main Street with an American flag flapping on a pole in the middle of it. At the three-story red brick building, there's a line of pilgrims at the doors. They've come to find baseball's past. They always find some of their own. And now they'll bump into Wade Boggs.

"It doesn't matter where the game came from," Ted Spencer said. "Its heart is here. This isn't baseball's birthplace, but it's baseball's hometown."

Freshmen In An Elite Fraternity

Wade Boggs and fellow inductee Ryne Sandberg have been hearing it from their new neighbors. Boggs and Sandberg are just the 259th and 260th players awarded bronze plaques in Cooperstown. The 50 living members here for the induction will be busting Boggs' and Sandberg's chops right up until it's official, maybe even a little after that.

They call the new guys "rookies." The stately Otesaga Hotel, right on the lake and sealed off by security, has become one big clubhouse.

"When I get up, and I make it down to the lobby, it seems like Yogi Berra is always there," Sandberg said.

When Boggs got on the bus the other day to attend an event, another third baseman, Brooks Robinson, Class of 1983, smiled and told him rookies sit in the back. "We might let him be in the third basemen picture with Brett, Schmidt and I," Robinson said the other day. Boggs and Sandberg, as required, and prodded by Kirby Puckett, Class of 2001, sang for the members Friday night. Boggs brutalized "Friends in Low Places."

All for his friends in bronze places.

"You're with them," Boggs said. "Now you're in the family. That's exactly the way they feel. Their arms are wide open."

Ted Spencer loves taking the new inductees on a private tour of the Hall. If they were all like Boggs, the Hall would need rubber walls.

"You should have seen him when he saw his exhibit," Spencer said. "He went bananas. You can see it in his eyes. There's a lot that goes with this."

"Responsibility," Robinson said. "It's bigger than us."

Safe At Home

About 10 years ago, the Hall was undergoing another renovation. Workers pulled back a display case -- and lying there was this faded, wallet-sized photograph. It wasn't anything from an exhibit. A visitor had apparently wedged the snapshot under the case. The photo was of a man in baseball flannels. Ted and the other curators decided it was from some old industrial league around World War II. They turned the photo over. On it was a scribbled note.

You were never too tired to play catch. You always came to see me play. On your day off, you helped build a Little League field. You're a Hall of Fame dad -- I wish you were here to savor this moment with me. Your son, Joe.

"He put his dad in the Hall of Fame," Ted Spencer said.

Wade Boggs weeps today. Then he'll return to Tampa. But he'll be back, looking to make fun of the next crop of rookies -- with his arms wide open. They all want to come back, you know, the ones in bronze and the ones waiting in line outside. They come down to the lake. They turn onto Main Street. And they know they're heading for home.