At the close of this column, please read the linked material from The Baseball Reliquary in the Los Angeles area and ask yourselves: Don’t people like Astrodome originator Judge Roy Hofheinz, — baseball pitcher, broadcaster, columnist, author, and highly successful major league manager Larry Dierker, — and early female baseball writer and broadcaster Anita Martini also do a pretty good job qualifying as culture-clanging shapers of the world we now inhabit in 2018 as a result of their original energy forays into the game of baseball?Come on, everybody! Our brothers and sisters on the west coast are doing everything they can to stir the pot of attention to the powerful two-way impact that baseball and the creative surrounding cultures are having upon each other for the sake of a more interesting life, but we cannot expect them to have lived close enough to all the epicenters of lifestyle impact to have made note of them all.
Some of them have happened in Houston — and other places too.
Judge Roy Hofheinz
Father of the Astrodome
Baseball’s P.T. Barnum
The late Judge Roy Hofheinz did not invent them, but he put domed stadiums on the map in a way that has changed everything about the once-called (and by Hofheinz himself) “eighth wonder of the world” view of stadium construction.
Larry Dierker’sPost-Game 18th Birthday Party
September 22, 1964
The day Dierker broke into baseball by striking out Willie Mays.
Larry Dierker celebrated his 18th birthday by striking out the great Willie Mays in his major league start, going on from there during his career to rack up a 20-win season, a no-hitter, and the second greatest number of pitching wins in the history of a largely losing Houston Astros team, before graduating to both the broadcast booth and print media columns — and then — just when it seemed the dust had settled on career change — being pulled into service as Astros manager and leading the club into the playoffs in four of his five seasons at the helm — recovering from brain surgery during his managerial tour to write a book about the scary experience — and then — off once more to some other subjects, including another book on baseball and a never-produced musical based on Damn Yankees. And deep in his heart is another book — a fictional book on Cuban Baseball back in the Pre-Castro days. The man has a mind that sweeps the landscape of social relationships with the intuition of the same guy who took his club to the money rounds in four of his five season shots.
Anita Martini (Artwork by Opie Otterstad.) She knew baseball as well as any man I’ve ever met.
The late Anita Martini was a gift to baseball and way ahead of her time as a female reporter and writer. In September 1974, she may also have been the first female reporter allowed into an MLB clubhouse when, at a division-clinching win in Houston, she gained the help of Dodger center fielder Jimmy Wynn and manager Walter Alston — and was allowed into the clubhouse as the first ever female reporter to cover the Dodgers under these circumstances.
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New Hall of Eternals Inductee and longtime Chicago White Sox organist Nancy Faust pauses long enough to say the following: “Please pay attention to these last two sections. They say exactly as possible how one gets inducted into the Hall of Eternals and how you may easily join The Baseball Reliquary and help us expand the search for future picks.”
Shrine of the Eternals
Criteria for election shall be: the distinctiveness of play (good or bad); the uniqueness of character and personality; and the imprint that the individual has made on the baseball landscape. Electees, both on and off the diamond, shall have been responsible for developing baseball in one or more of the following ways: through athletic and/or business achievements; in terms of its larger cultural and sociological impact as a mass entertainment; and as an arena for the human imagination.
Anyone associated with baseball, past or present, is eligible for election, including players, managers and coaches, umpires, executives and administrators, broadcasters and writers, fans, and those who have interpreted the game through artistic and cultural mediums. Fictional characters from the realms of literature, drama, motion pictures, etc., may also be considered.
By authorization of the Board of Directors of the Baseball Reliquary, three individuals will be elected to the Shrine of the Eternals on an annual basis by the organization’s membership. All members in good standing, including honorary members, shall be eligible to vote. A screening committee will be appointed by the Board of Directors to prepare a ballot, listing in alphabetical order candidates for election to the Shrine of the Eternals. The ballot will be mailed to the membership, and the three candidates receiving the most votes in any year will be elected.
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New Inductee Announcement
Friends & Reliquarians:
The Board of Directors of the Baseball Reliquary is pleased to announce the 20th class of electees to the Shrine of the Eternals.
Tommy John, Rusty Staub, and Nancy Faust were elected upon receiving the highest number of votes in balloting conducted during the month of April 2018 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 22, 2018 at the Donald R. Wright Auditorium in the Pasadena Central Library, Pasadena, California.
We are pleased to attach the official news release, which can also be viewed online at the Baseball Reliquary Web site:
http://www.baseballreliquary.org/2018/05/shrine-of-the-eternals-class-of-2018/
Congratulations to the Class of 2018!
Please advise if we can provide any further information.
Sincerely,
Terry Cannon
Executive Director
The Baseball Reliquary
http://www.baseballreliquary.org/
e-mail: terymar@earthlink.net
phone: (626) 791-7647
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Bill McCurdy
Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher
The Pecan Park Eagle
The Pecan Park Eagle 
May 8, 2018 at 3:22 am |
Thanks Bill. I’d almost forgotten.