When Lompoc Police Cpl. Sergio Arias took his family last month to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, he figured they would get a front-row seat to some of the game’s most historic figures and moments.
While that turned out to be true, Arias and his family also made some history of their own.
Shortly after entering the museum on July 13, Arias was approached by a representative of the facility and informed that he was the Hall’s 17 millionth visitor. To celebrate the milestone — the Hall commemorates each millionth visitor — Arias was given a $250 gift certificate to the museum gift shop and a lifetime membership to the museum, which includes free entry for the remainder of his life.
“It was definitely not expected,” Arias said this past week of the experience. “It was a pleasant surprise for sure. ... My kids were thrilled and it was definitely cool that they did that.”
Arias visited the museum that day with his wife, Amber, their daughters Gabi and Aubrey, and their son, Noah. Arias said they were in New York to visit family and hadn’t necessarily planned on making their first trip to the Hall of Fame.
“It was more like if we get a chance to go, we’ll stop by on the way to our family’s house,” he said. “We did, so we stopped by and it was actually a really good experience.”
After the visit, Arias said his milestone achievement was a hot topic during later family gatherings.
“It definitely was a conversation point,” he said. “We went to upstate New York for a couple family reunions and it was definitely a memory I’ll never forget. My kids and my wife got to experience it, too, which made it even cooler.”
Arias, a fan of the New York Yankees, said he “definitely” plans to get some usage out of his lifetime Hall membership. Former Yankees closer Mariano Rivera is essentially a lock to enter the Hall of Fame next year in his first year of eligibility, and fellow Yankees great Derek Jeter will likely join the acclaimed list of inductees in 2020 in his first year on the ballot.
“That’d definitely be something to plan on,” Arias said of watching those Yankees legends enter the Hall. “Time permitting, that would definitely be a cool time to go, for sure.”
Like the accomplishments of the players who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, a record of the milestone reached by Arias, as well as the 16 prior "millionth" visitors, will be kept within the museum.
Jon Shestakofsky, the vice president of communications and education for the Hall, said Friday that the goal in honoring the milestone visitors was to let them know they are appreciated.
“The feeling is that 'Hey, you’re now part of the Hall of Fame family,'” he said.
According to the Hall of Fame's records, the Hall’s 1 millionth visitor arrived in 1956. While the 7 millionth guest didn’t visit until 1987, the Hall has averaged about a million guests every three to four years since. The 16 millionth visitor stopped by the Hall on Sept. 2, 2014.
Of those 17 people recognized, Arias is the first who resides west of the Mississippi River. Fourteen of the 17 people lived, at least at the time of their visit, in the northeastern U.S., with one from the state of Georgia and one from the eastern Canadian province of Quebec.
“Cooperstown is not exactly the easiest place to get to, but we’ve had an amazing outpouring of support and visitorship, so it’s a great way for us to share with the whole country how many people have come to visit us," Shestakofsky said of the reasoning behind keeping those statistics. "It’s kind of a fun way to point out who’s come to visit us and to commemorate those special moments.”
When asked if he considered himself to be a Hall of Famer, even if only by a technicality, Arias laughed and downplayed his newly minted connection to baseball history.
“I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “I’m a member of the museum, I guess. I’m definitely not a baseball Hall of Famer.”