SHRINE OF THE ETERNALS:
2006 INDUCTION DAY
Sunday,
July 23, 2006
~ 2:00 PM
Donald
R. Wright Auditorium
Pasadena Central Library
285 E. Walnut St., Pasadena, CA
Free Admission / Information (626) 791-7647
The Baseball Reliquary will sponsor the
2006 Induction Day ceremony for its eighth class
of electees to the Shrine of the Eternals on
Sunday, July 23, 2006, beginning at 2:00 PM, at
the Donald R. Wright Auditorium in the Pasadena
Central Library, 285 East Walnut Street,
Pasadena, California. The doors will open at
1:30 PM, and admission is open to the public and
free of charge. The inductees will be Josh
Gibson, Fernando Valenzuela, and Kenichi
Zenimura. The keynote address will be delivered
by Samuel O. Regalado, a professor of history at
California State University, Stanislaus. In
addition, the Baseball Reliquary will honor the
recipients of the 2006 Hilda Award, Bill Murray,
and the 2006 Tony Salin Memorial Award, Kerry Yo
Nakagawa.
The festivities will commence with an
Induction Day tradition, the ceremonial bell
ringing in honor of the late Brooklyn Dodgers
fan Hilda Chester; everyone who attends is
encouraged to bring a bell to ring for this
occasion. The National Anthem will be performed
on the harp by Ellie Choate.
For further information, contact the
Baseball Reliquary by phone at (626) 791-7647 or
by e-mail at
terymar@earthlink.net. The 2006 Induction
Day is co-sponsored by the Pasadena Public
Library and is made possible, in part, by a
grant from the Los Angeles County Board of
Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts
Commission.
2006 INDUCTEES
The highest honor afforded an
individual by the Baseball Reliquary is election
to the Shrine of the Eternals. Three individuals
are elected on an annual basis in voting
conducted by the membership of the Reliquary.
Similar in concept to the National Baseball Hall
of Fame, the Shrine of the Eternals differs
philosophically in that statistical
accomplishment is not a criterion for election;
the Shrine, rather, honors individuals who have
impacted the baseball landscape in ways that do
not necessarily have anything to do with
numbers. The 2006 electees – Josh Gibson,
Fernando Valenzuela, and Kenichi Zenimura – will
join previous inductees 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.
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. Josh Gibson’s induction will be
accepted by Sean Gibson, the ballplayer’s
great-grandson, on behalf of the Gibson family.
Sean Gibson actively promotes his
great-grandfather’s legacy by serving as
Executive Director of the Pittsburgh-based Josh
Gibson Foundation, which provides youth with
greater access to educational resources,
scholarships, support services, and training.
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. Kenichi Zenimura’s induction will be
accepted by his son, Kenso “Howard” Zenimura, on
behalf of the Zenimura family. Howard Zenimura
played baseball at Fresno State University and,
in the 1950s, he played professionally in Japan
with the Hiroshima Carp. For over 25 years,
Zenimura has coached and organized youth
baseball teams in Fresno which annually compete
in goodwill tours with Japan, Korea, China,
Mexico, and Hawaii.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS AND AWARDS
The keynote address for the 2006
Induction Day will be presented by SAMUEL
O. REGALADO, who holds a Ph.D. from
Washington State University and is currently
Professor of History at California State
University, Stanislaus. He received a
Smithsonian Institution Fellowship in 1994 to
study the sports programs within the
Japanese-American internment camps. Regalado’s
research on Mexicans and Latinos in baseball has
appeared in his book Viva Baseball!: Latin
Major Leaguers and Their Special Hunger
(University of Illinois Press, 1998) and in
numerous articles in scholarly journals. He
serves as an advisor to Mexican-American
Baseball in Los Angeles: From the Barrios to the
Big Leagues, a collaborative project between
the Baseball Reliquary and the John F. Kennedy
Memorial Library at California State University,
Los Angeles. Regalado has also done research on
Japanese-American baseball during the Nisei
period and served as a consultant to the Nisei
Baseball Research Project’s traveling exhibit,
Diamonds in the Rough. His uncle, Rudy
Regalado, played in the major leagues with the
Cleveland Indians from 1954-1956.
The ceremony will also feature the
presentation of the 2006 Hilda Award, named in
memory of the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers fan Hilda
Chester and given annually to a fan for his/her
extraordinary passion for and dedication to
baseball. This year’s recipient is BILL
MURRAY, a Chicago Cubs fan
extraordinaire and part owner of the St. Paul
Saints (a franchise in the American Association,
an independent professional baseball league),
for whom he also serves as team psychologist.
When not at the ballpark, Murray is one of the
busiest and most visible actors in the world.
After drawing national attention in the 1970s as
one of the “Not Ready for Prime Time” players on
the TV series Saturday Night Live, he
moved on to the big screen, where he has
appeared in more than forty movies.
Another highlight of the ceremony will
be the presentation of the 2006 Tony Salin
Memorial Award, named for the late baseball
author and researcher, which annually honors one
individual for his/her dedication to preserving
baseball history. This year’s recipient is
KERRY YO NAKAGAWA, founder and
director of the Nisei Baseball Research Project
(NBRP), a Fresno, California-based nonprofit
organization dedicated to preserving the legacy
of Japanese Americans in baseball. He also
curated Diamonds in the Rough, an
exhibition on the history of Japanese-American
baseball which has traveled throughout the
United States and Japan, including stops at the
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in
Cooperstown in 1998 and the Japanese American
National Museum in Los Angeles in 2000. Nakagawa
served as a consultant to Baseball as America,
the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s
touring exhibition, and authored the book
Through a Diamond (Rudi Publishing, San
Francisco, 2001), which chronicles one hundred
years of Japanese-American baseball history. A
member of the Screen Actors Guild since 1980,
Nakagawa has co-starred in TV series including
Hill Street Blues, Matlock, Marcus Welby,
and General Hospital. |