Crew that ‘inducted’ singer in Cooperstown from Ohio

On Jan 27, 2022

It is a small world, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when Gary Porteus contacted me this week.

But man, was I ever.

On Sunday I shared a story about Meat Loaf, the classic rock legend who died last week at the age of 74. It was a story I had always wanted to share, and upon hearing of his death I realized that the time had come, even if there was nothing tying the tale to central Ohio.

Or so I thought. What a wonderfully strange and interwoven world we live in.

If you missed that column, it detailed a story I’d heard while working as a reporter in 1995 in Cooperstown, New York, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. I related the account of some carpenters I’d met and interviewed for an unrelated feature story.

The carpenters mentioned during the course of our conversation that they had a secret. They had been doing a big job in the baseball hall the previous summer when they met Meat Loaf, a huge fan of the game, and aided him in a scheme to “induct” him into the hall by hiding his autographed ball cap inside.

When I searched my mind for details of all this last week, I found that many were lost to time. It had been nearly 30 years ago. I didn’t even have a copy of the story I’d written on the carpenters to refresh my memory.

Porteus did. He was one of the carpenters, and he emailed it to me.

And I was gobsmacked.

I’d forgotten — because of course at that time in my life, Columbus, Ohio, meant nothing to me personally — that the team of carpenters who met Meat Loaf in Cooperstown were from right here in central Ohio.

Porteus, now 68, for most of his adult life resided in the Morrow County village of Cardington. He just recently moved south to Ostrander in Delaware County.

The carpentry crew he and others started decades ago, the so-called Carpenters on Fire, has always been based in Columbus. Porteus still visits his workshop near E. Broad Street and Hamilton Road five days a week.

“I’ve been in Columbus since going to Ohio State in the early ’70s,” he said.

The idea for the Carpenters on Fire was hatched with a buddy while the pair worked at Waterworks, a popular Columbus restaurant back then, he said.

The crew eventually became known for their quality woodworking. For a while they traveled the country, even doing a job at the Lincoln Memorial a few years before their work at the baseball hall.

Porteus fleshed out the details of the Meat Loaf incident with me on Tuesday night.

He said that on the day they met Meat Loaf in 1994, they were asked to cease their sawing for a few hours so the singer could tour the hall after a show in Syracuse the previous night.

While in town, the carpentry crew had befriended a local woman known for making historically accurate ball caps, including those used in the movies, “A League of Their Own,” and “The Natural.” They passed along to Meat Loaf’s tour bus driver that she would no doubt make the singer one.

As they spent their extended break in the alley behind her shop, Meat Loaf’s tour bus pulled up.

Were they the guys who could get Meat Loaf a hat? a member of the entourage asked.

That’s us, they said.

“So the next thing you know,” Porteus said, “Meat Loaf comes off the bus and we all shake hands and talk about the hat, the hall and the fact that we were going to induct our kids in the hall by putting their Little League baseball cards in a sealed corner of the cash wrap in the gift shop where we were installing the cabinets.”

“So, Meat came up with the idea of signing and sending one of his hats to us and putting our(kids’) baseball cards around the inside rim of the cap.”

That’s what they did.

“I assume it is still there,” Porteus said, “but I haven’t been back since 1994, so I am not sure.”

Meat Loaf invited the crew and their families backstage to a show he was performing later that year at the Polaris Amphitheater. They gave him a picture of the secret “induction” at the hall and even met his daughter.

“He was fun and remembered us and was down to earth,” Porteus said. “It was pretty damn cool. We had a great night. We said, ‘until we meet again,’ knowing we never would of course.”

There you have it. Porteus and his wife were driving home from a weekend in Cleveland when a buddy texted him the link to my column, saying that it sure sounded like it was about the Carpenters on Fire.