In conjunction with the exhibition “Gone But Not Forgotten: Celebrating Burbank, the Browns, and Barnstorming Baseball,” the Baseball Reliquary will sponsor its “Barnstorming Bus Tour,” a guided tour of historic baseball-related sites in the Los Angeles area, on Saturday, May 12, 2001. Highlights of the tour, which will begin in Burbank at 10:00 AM and conclude at approximately 5:00 PM, will include visits to:

• The former sites of two legendary Southland ballparks: Olive Memorial Stadium in Burbank, spring training home of the St. Louis Browns from 1949-1952, and Wrigley Field, home of the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League from 1925-1957. Wrigley Field was popular as a background for Hollywood movies, including Pride of the Yankees, It Happens Every Spring, and Damn Yankees, and was the location for the television series Home Run Derby.

• “Gone But Not Forgotten: Celebrating Burbank, the Browns, and Barnstorming Baseball,” an exhibition of historic baseball artifacts presented by the Baseball Reliquary at the Burbank Central Library.

• The NBBJ Sports and Entertainment Office in Marina Del Rey. Founded in 1943, NBBJ is the third largest architecture firm in the world, employing nearly 800 professionals in offices in six U.S. cities and in Tokyo, Japan; Taipei, Taiwan; and Oslo, Norway. The Los Angeles studio has overseen the design and construction of retractable roof ballparks such as Safeco Field in Seattle and Miller Park in Milwaukee, as well as the recent renovations at Dodger Stadium. NBBJ Senior Associate Jan Szupinski will talk about integrating modern technology and classic turn-of-the-century aesthetics in contemporary ballpark design, and will show models, photographs, and architectural drawings from the firm’s award-winning projects.

• The resting places of baseball immortals Frank Chance (Rosedale Cemetery), Curt Flood and Wally Berger (Inglewood Park Cemetery), and Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley (Holy Cross Cemetery).

• The Amateur Athletic Foundation’s Paul Ziffren Sports Resource Center in Los Angeles, the largest sports library in the country and a state-of-the-art research facility dedicated to the advancement of sports knowledge and scholarship. Lunch will be provided in the library’s outdoor patio area.

Guest speakers on the tour will include Dick Beverage, founder and director of the Pacific Coast League Historical Society and author of books on the PCL’s Los Angeles Angels and Hollywood Stars; Joseph Dossen of the St. Louis Browns Historical Society; Mark Langill, Los Angeles Dodgers historian; and Albert Kilchesty, Baseball Reliquary archivist/historian.

The charter bus is equipped with television monitors, and a collection of entertaining and historic baseball videos will be screened while the bus is en route to the various destinations. Tour participants will receive a letterpress poster for the exhibition “Gone But Not Forgotten: Celebrating Burbank, the Browns, and Barnstorming Baseball,” produced for the Baseball Reliquary by Hatch Show Print of Nashville, Tennessee.

The tour fee is $25 per person (which includes lunch), and $15 for members of the Baseball Reliquary. As the bus seats a maximum of only 55 people, reservations are required, and full payment must be received in advance of the tour date of Saturday, May 12. You will receive confirmation of your reservation upon receipt of payment.

The bus will depart promptly at 10:00 AM from George Izay Park (formerly Olive Avenue Park) in Burbank. Tour participants may park their vehicles at no charge in the public lot adjacent to the park and just north of the Jocelyn Adult Center on West Olive Avenue and Griffith Park Drive. Return time will be approximately 5:00 PM.