The Board of Directors of the Baseball
Reliquary, a Southern California-based nonprofit
organization dedicated to fostering an
appreciation of American art and culture through
the context of baseball history, is pleased to
announce the 2006 class of electees to the
Shrine of the Eternals. The Shrine of the
Eternals is the national organization’s
equivalent to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Josh
Gibson, Fernando Valenzuela, and Kenichi
Zenimura received the highest number of votes in
balloting conducted in the month of April by the
membership of the Baseball Reliquary. The three
electees will be formally inducted into the
Shrine of the Eternals in a public ceremony on
Sunday, July 23, 2006 at the Pasadena Central
Library, Pasadena, California.
Of the fifty eligible candidates on
the 2006 ballot, Josh Gibson received the
highest voting percentage, being named on 38% of
the ballots returned, followed by Fernando
Valenzuela with 32% and Kenichi Zenimura with
32%. Runners-up in this year’s election included
Yogi Berra (31%), Casey Stengel (31%), Effa
Manley (25%), Bill Buckner (23%), Dizzy Dean
(23%), Pete Gray (23%), Rube Foster (21%), Ted
Giannoulas (21%), Bill James (21%), and J.R.
Richard (21%).
JOSH GIBSON
(1911-1947) was often called “the black Babe
Ruth,” but Ruth might just as easily have been
termed “the white Josh Gibson.” During a 17-year
career with the Negro League Homestead Grays and
Pittsburgh Crawfords, the right-handed hitting
catcher was credited with slugging over 900 home
runs (although many came against semi-pro and
non-league teams). Along with Satchel Paige,
Gibson was the biggest drawing card in the
history of the Negro Leagues and was the
standard against whom other hitters were
measured. He was also an excellent defensive
catcher with a rifle arm. The fact that every
team he played for, including the Homestead
Grays, who won nine consecutive Negro National
League pennants beginning in 1937, enjoyed
tremendous success on the field was yet another
testament to his extraordinary talent.
Unfortunately, much of the American sports world
was deprived of the opportunity to witness the
heroics of Josh Gibson, as he was felled by a
brain hemorrhage in 1947, just three months
before Jackie Robinson’s integration of major
league baseball.
Phenoms come and phenoms go, but few
evolve into legitimate superstars let alone
national heroes. And fewer still burst onto the
scene in a manner as dramatic and captivating as
FERNANDO VALENZUELA. In 1981 the
Los Angeles Dodgers introduced the world to the
Mexican superstar they had always sought, a
chubby young left-hander who, in the space of a
few short weeks, launched an international craze
– Fernandomania – and propelled the Dodgers to
World Series victory. With his distinctive
delivery (eyes rolled heavenward at the apex of
his windup), superb control, and virtually
untouchable screwball, Fernando (no last name
needed, thank you) set the baseball world on its
ear, reeling off eight wins in his first eight
starts (five of them shutouts) on his way to
winning the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year
Awards – the first player in major league
baseball history to accomplish the feat.
Fernando was a box-office bonanza, drawing
thousands of jubilant Mexican-American fans to
every game he pitched, not only in Los Angeles
but in all the other National League cities. In
Southern California, Fernandomania was an early
indicator of both the Latino community’s
demographic revolution and the cultural and
political breakthroughs that would soon be too
pronounced to ignore. Fernando became the
foundation of the Dodgers’ rotation through the
1990 season, after which he became a journeyman
pitcher before retiring at the end of the 1997
season with a 173-153 lifetime mark. He
currently works as color analyst for the
Dodgers’ Spanish-language radio broadcasts.
Often called the “father of
Japanese-American baseball,” KENICHI
ZENIMURA (1900-1968) was a pioneering
player, coach, manager, and organizer whose
contributions and influence spanned the Pacific.
Born in Hiroshima, Zenimura acquired a passion
for the game in his youth and, after moving to
Fresno, California in 1920, he founded the
Fresno Athletic Club, a Japanese-American
baseball team that lasted more than fifty years
and attained national recognition. Despite being
only five feet tall and weighing 100 pounds,
Zenimura was an intense competitor as a
shortstop and catcher, and he organized goodwill
tours of Japanese-American teams to Japan in the
1920s and ‘30s. During World War II, the
Zenimura family was sent to internment camps in
Fresno and Gila River, Arizona, where under
Kenichi’s guidance, baseball fields were
constructed and teams and leagues were formed
behind barbed wire. Huge crowds flocked to the
games and baseball was credited with bonding
wartime internees, giving them a sense of
normalcy and community pride. The late actor Pat
Morita, a former Gila River internee, said
Zenimura left an indelible mark on that
fraternal community in the desert by showing
“that with effort and persistence, you can
overcome the harshness of adversity.” Zenimura
returned to Fresno after the war, where he
continued playing (he caught his last game at
age fifty-five) and coaching until his death in
1968.
Josh
Gibson, Fernando Valenzuela, and Kenichi
Zenimura join twenty-one other baseball
luminaries who have been inducted into the
Shrine of the Eternals since elections began in
1999, including, in alphabetical order, Jim
Abbott, Dick Allen, Moe Berg, Ila Borders, Jim
Bouton, Roberto Clemente, Rod Dedeaux, Dock
Ellis, Mark Fidrych, Curt Flood, William “Dummy”
Hoy, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Bill “Spaceman” Lee,
Marvin Miller, Minnie Minoso, Satchel Paige,
Jimmy Piersall, Pam Postema, Jackie Robinson,
Lester Rodney, and Bill Veeck, Jr.
For additional information on the
Shrine of the Eternals, visit the Baseball
Reliquary Web site at
www.baseballreliquary.org, or contact Terry
Cannon, Executive Director, by phone at (626)
791-7647 or by e-mail at
terymar@earthlink.net. |