A packed house at the Pasadena Central Library’s Donald R. Wright Auditorium, where the Shrine of the Eternals Induction Day ceremonies have been held annually since 1999, awaits the beginning of the afternoon’s festivities.

The Baseball Reliquary’s Executive Director, Terry Cannon, rings a cowbell to commence the 2009 ceremony.

Bob Colleary accepts the 2009 Hilda Award, which is presented annually by the Baseball Reliquary to recognize distinguished service to the game by a baseball fan. Born in Brooklyn, Colleary considers himself a baseball nomad and the biggest fan anywhere without a favorite team. One of his main passions is collecting baseball relics from its past. At one time or another he owned Donn Clendenon’s 1969 Mets World Series ring, Babe Ruth’s spittoon, and the lineup card from Game Six of the 1975 World Series which was won by Carlton Fisk’s 12^th-inning homer. As a gift to his long-suffering Bucky Dented Red Sox fan friends, he also performed a complex ritualistic exorcism which Reversed The Curse using a straight razor which had once shaved Babe Ruth. While much of his collection has been redistributed throughout the collecting landscape, Colleary’s prize possession remains Bill Veeck’s wooden leg, which is the centerpiece of his Strat-o-Matic baseball league, which is known as Bill Veeck’s Leg. The annual draft lottery is conducted each New Year’s Eve by placing dice inside the leg and rolling them onto the floor.

Reliquarians Mark Diamond (decked out in his Reliquary finest) and Tom Tully await the Keynote Address.

The 2009 Keynote Address is delivered by Don Malcolm, who has had a shadowy literary career ever since the mid-1970s, when he wrote the first "hypertext" novel — before "hypertext" had even been invented. In the 1990s he turned his offbeat style and disturbing, ambiguous tone to baseball, crashing together numbers and literature in the controversial follow-on to Bill James’ Baseball Abstract, called The Big Bad Baseball Annual. He went on the lam in 2001 and has last been seen editing and writing for the Film Noir Foundation’s e-zine, The Noir City Sentinel. His book on noir, The Dark Embrace, will be published in 2011. While working assiduously to remain "under the radar," Malcolm has become a stalwart (though covert) ally of the Baseball Reliquary, an organization he steadfastly refuses to join "because they are the only ones who would accept me as a member."

Jim Eisenreich’s induction into the Shrine of the Eternals was accepted by his close personal friends, Jill and Mike Magnante. Eisenreich was unable to attend due to a coaching commitment. Mike Magnante, who is currently a schoolteacher in the San Fernando Valley, was a star pitcher at UCLA, was drafted by Kansas City in 1988, and made his major league debut with the Royals in 1991 as a teammate of Eisenreich’s. He had an excellent career as a left-handed relief pitcher with the Royals, Houston Astros, Anaheim Angels, and Oakland Athletics, retiring from the pro game in 2002. The Magnantes provided considerable insight into Eisenreich’s battles in overcoming the debilitating effects of Tourette Syndrome.