Minnesota Family Makes Hall of Fame Road Trip for Hall of Fame Ceremony

Jul 30

Most families have months to plan a cross country road trip. Michael Brinkman of Blaine and his family had a few hours.

Michael, his wife Amanda and daughter Avery had plans to head to Cooperstown, N.Y., to watch Joe Mauer’s Hall of Fame induction. The problem? The nationwide Crowdstrike/Microsoft shutdown. Brinkman woke up to a text at 6 a.m. from American Airlines saying the family’s flight was canceled. That was about three hours before they were to head to the airport.

“There was no doubt in our minds we were going to go,” he told Pulltab Sports.

“Just being a baseball fan, growing up playing, Cooperstown has always been on a bucket list,” said Brinkman, who grew up in Lake City and has been a longtime sales and marketing exec in sports. “It’s in the middle of nowhere, so you have to find the right time to do it. In the back of my mind, as soon as the Mauer talk came up, I thought maybe this is the time. Amanda was all in on it.”

So Brinkman hopped online and got a rental car - a 2022 Ford Bronco - near their house. They were on the road at 10:15 a.m., and all was fine until they got to Woodbury and sat in traffic on I-94.

That’s when the coolant light came on. Maybe this wasn’t meant to be? Not for this family. He stopped to fill the coolant “from time to time” and they arrived in Cleveland at 1 a.m. The Red Roof Inn was their home for the night.

“We did Yellowstone as a family two years ago, but with that you’re stopping here and there and it’s broken up,” Brinkman said. “But one of the reasons I said we were doing this was because I did this growing up because my grandparents lived in Colorado Springs. It triggered me that this was the moment. This was the chance with my daughter.”

The family arrived in Cooperstown at 1:30 p.m. Saturday which was “perfect.” Having done research on this trip for more than a year, Brinkman knew from an old friend who he worked with at the Las Vegas 51’s exactly what to do. “We had two blankets ready to go, one for the induction ceremony on Sunday and one for the parade on Saturday.” Amanda dropped them off in town to check out the museum, got us checked into the Airbnb. “I feel like we didn’t miss a beat.”

While the parade and ceremony were great, Brinkman pointed to Monday’s roundtable as an especially rewarding part of the trip.

“I think the induction is cool for what it is,” he said. “But it feels like the personalities of the players are a little too proper. When they’re up on stage you forget they’re talking about a game. The players have to thank everyone…I thought the roundtable was much cooler, they were done with what they had to do and just told stories.”

The Brinkmans drove 75 miles to Albany - Cooperstown really is in the middle of nowhere - and flew out Tuesday. He even got a reimbursement from the rental car company for all the coolant he’d filled the Bronco with.

“Honestly it was one of those things where we all realized while it was going on that it was so cool,” he said. “Even days later it was pretty neat. Twins win!”