For the love of the game

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Like most doctors, Mark Cooper takes his job seriously. A radiologist at Methodist Hospital for 27 years, he’s worked as what he calls a "doctor’s doctor," consulting with the hospital’s physicians to diagnose patients and order necessary tests.

"You have to know everything there is about medicine," he said of his field. "I enjoy the fact that you could be involved with the care of almost every patient in the hospital."

No matter the hours he keeps at the facility at 2301 Broad St., Cooper always takes time to relax.

The 56-year-old is a diehard baseball fan and has been since childhood, when he recalled going to his first Phillies games at Connie Mack Stadium in North Philadelphia, where he grew up.

When Veterans Stadium opened in 1971, he traveled to South Philly — where parents Nathan and Celia grew up — to take in games. Today, between working 10-hour days at Methodist and frequenting Citizens Bank Park, it’s no wonder friends joke his home isn’t Wynnewood — where he moved in ’84 — rather, it’s South Philadelphia.

In ’83, he accompanied wife Lynne to a flea market in Adamstown, where she was looking for antique jewelry. Instead, Cooper spotted a more interesting find in The Great American Game, a board game from the ’30s with the theme of his favorite pastime.

Now, with a collection of more than 500 board games from the 1860s to the ’60s, Cooper has hit a home run at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, where his collection has been chosen for display through the end of 2008.

This is only the third time in its history the Cooperstown, N.Y., museum has dedicated an exhibit to the collection of one person. Titled "Home Games: A Century of Baseball Games from the Collection of Dr. Mark Cooper," the 900-square-foot room displays more than 50 board games — an element of the sport he said fans may not be familiar with.

"People always knew about [baseball memorabilia] — uniforms, gloves, balls. But people really never knew about these games," he said. "They’re sort of an education to me and to the world."

South Philly has been a fixture in Cooper’s life, as he was born at the now-shuttered Mount Sinai Hospital at Fourth and Reed streets. Growing up in North Philly, he remembers making visits to his grandparents’ home at Eighth and Beulah streets and the strong sense of community he felt from their neighbors.

Having the privilege of working here, he said, is comforting.

"It’s not the hustle and bustle feel of a big city. You look at all the homes, they’re like the ones I grew up around in North Philadelphia. You see kids in the street playing games like stickball, you don’t see kids playing like that in the suburbs," he said. "I remember playing those games as a kid, also."

The camaraderie he’s created with the people he has come in contact with complete the good vibes he has toward the area.

"I’ll be walking to Scannicchio’s and bump into patients all along Broad Street," he said.

The 12-and-a-half-mile long street has played an important role in his medical career and hobby.

"I like to say that I collected the games as I moved south on Broad," Cooper said of his education at Central High School, where he played third base for the school’s ball club, Temple University, where he received his B.A. in biology, Jefferson Medical College, where he got his M.D. and completed his residency and finally to Methodist.

Prior to the Internet, Cooper’s collection came from flea markets and classified ads. The more he accumulated, the more time he spent at local libraries, scrolling through microfilm for more information on the sport’s evolution and the board games themselves. Cooper quickly learned he could pinpoint the manufacturing date of board games by knowing what year rules went into effect in Major League Baseball. For example, in the 19th century, seven balls, rather than today’s four, were needed to walk a player, and four strikes dictated an out, which surely impacted rules on a board game.

"It gave me an appreciation for how baseball evolved," he said.

As word got out among collectors in the mid-’90s of Cooper’s vast collection, Schiffer Publishing tracked him down and asked him to co-author a coffeetable book featuring his finds called "Baseball Games: Home Versions of the National Pastime, 1860’s-1960’s." A few years later in ’96, Ted Spencer, curator of the Baseball Hall of Fame, saw the book and called Cooper, asking if he could see the collection while he was in town for the All-Star Game that summer. It took more than 10 years and construction of a temporary exhibit room for the April 12 opening of Cooper’s collection, which he previewed beforehand. He’s planning to take Lynne, as well as 22-year-old son Noah, an outfielder for Columbia University’s baseball team, and 26-year-old daughter Michelle, to see the exhibit this summer.

The advent of eBay helped round out Cooper’s collection, which he believes is finally complete with every game commercially sold in the 100-year period he chose — a time before the rise of electronic games — as a throwback to a simpler era.

"Baseball is the only game without a clock and board games don’t have clocks, either. So for me, these games represent the timelessness of childhood," he said.

When he started his collection, he was buying games for about $35. Since then, he said, prices have gone up and games can retail anywhere from $50 to $20,000.

There are several formats the games utilize, but many follow a basic pattern of moving pawns around an infield according to different plays selected by a spinning device or a drawn card. While they may be on display in a special room in his home, they certainly don’t sit around and collect dust. Each has been played by the baseball guru and his friends and family.

The games are Cooper’s pride and joy, but as far as ever selling them, "Who knows?" he said. "It’s tough to say. My wife said to me when we bought our house, ‘We have to make sure there’s a place to put [the collection], it’s a big part of who you are.’"

Contact Staff Writer Caitlin Meals at cmeals@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.