COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. - Ed Delahanty is smiling. He is looking off to his left, focusing on something in the distance. His hair is combed neatly and he has put his baseball hat somewhere, but it is not on his head.

Ed's smile is really just a playful twist of the mouth, as if he knows a great secret and is willing to keep it. I follow his gaze for direction, but at the moment Delahanty is looking at a family dressed entirely in Red Sox gear, arguing passionately about whether it is, in fact, time for lunch.

I have come to the National Baseball Hall of Fame to seek clues. There is a mystery to be solved. If the "Da Vinci Code" can unravel the delicate matter of whether Jesus fathered children and set up sort of a Holy Grail 401(k) plan for their financial future, then there must be a way to decipher the unknowable curse that follows the Philadelphia Phillies.

There is no other place to begin than Cooperstown, baseball's ancestral home for want of a better tale than the one dreamed up about Abner Doubleday. The greats of the game and the history of the game are gathered here in a modest, three-story brick building on Main Street. They must know something.

Outside, the weekend rain patters on the wooden grandstand roof of Doubleday Field two blocks away and sends tourists into the gift shops that line the street. They crowd into Pete Rose's souvenir store, where one can buy autographed "Hit King" baseballs and other mementos of the game's deposed monarch.

There are bits of Rose on display in the Hall, just as there are bits of the Phillies scattered here and there. But there is no sincere explanation how a franchise can begin play in 1883 and bring so much suffering upon itself and its followers for so long. One championship in nearly 125 years, and even the good years are tainted in some way.

The latest is the news that Lenny Dykstra might have used steroids, particularly in preparation for the 1993 season that is the only decent moment in the last two decades of Phillies baseball. He might have helped a former friend bet on games as well. Anyone who was around Dykstra for any period of time does not need to sit down when hearing this. Dude's moral compass was never a very reliable means of finding a way out of the woods.

So 1993 has a shadow of sorts, as does the 1980 championship, which was barely completed before an indictment was brought against a Reading physician, accusing him of supplying nearly a third of the big-league roster with amphetamines. The charges later were dropped, but not for lack of a case.

The 1983 World Series team, according to federal testimony later given by Lonnie Smith, was awash in cocaine.

Maybe 1915 and 1950 were nice, unfettered years, but maybe not.

This could all be the Curse of Delahanty. The slugger's life took a bad turn after the Phillies cut him loose following the 1901 season. He met his fate in July 1903 when he drunkenly fell off a train as it crossed Niagara Falls, which may account for the missing hat.

There are no clues on the plaque, however; no secret message within the text about batting averages and home runs. There is only the smile and the gaze that crosses the gallery and seems to find another former Phillies player, Chuck Klein.

This could be the Curse of Klein. He played in 15 seasons for the team, in three stints, and the Phils were more than 500 games under .500 with him on the roster. What suffering for the only 20th-century player to get 200 or more hits in each of his first five full seasons.

Chuck is smiling, too, his hat with the block letter "P" pushed back a bit on his head. But Klein has no clues to offer, either, and he is looking at nothing aside from an elderly couple wearing Yankees hats. If there is a way to lift the curse, Chuck took it with him.

There are no answers elsewhere in the Hall, either. The recent players and inductees - such as Mike Schmidt and Richie Ashburn - wouldn't know. They were mostly victims.

Connie Mack wasn't talking about his former crosstown rivals, nor was Al Simmons or Jimmie Foxx, who, like everyone else in Cooperstown this year, is wearing a Boston Red Sox cap. Even Sliding Billy Hamilton refused to get down and dirty.

It was worth a try, but cracking The Dalrymple Code, or whatever this is, won't be done on a rainy afternoon. One thing is certain: If you want to learn about the Philadelphia Phillies, the Hall of Fame ain't necessarily the place to do it.