The festivities began at 2:30 PM (Pacific Standard Time) with a ceremonial bell ringing in tribute to the late, great Hilda Chester, who for thirty years sat in the bleachers at Ebbets Field as the unofficial mascot of the Brooklyn Dodgers, clanging her cowbells and banging her frying pans and iron ladles. The Reliquary’s founder and Executive Director, Terry Cannon, who also served as Master of Ceremonies for the day’s festivities, called Hilda "perhaps the most famous fan and percussionist in baseball history" and remarked that the bell ringing has now become tradition as the call-to-order for the Induction Day ceremony. Cannon added: "Hilda’s voice, which was described as being like that of a fish peddler, could be heard throughout the ballpark, and when someone would dare to criticize one of her beloved Dodgers -- especially her personal favorite, Leo Durocher -- she could be heard to shout, ‘Eatcha heart out, ya bum!’"

        The second keynote address was made by Tomas Benitez, an arts professional for over twenty years who has worked with a number of community groups in East Los Angeles, including Plaza de la Raza, the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts, and Self-Help Graphics & Art, which he currently serves as director. Benitez spoke about growing up playing baseball in the sandlots of East Los Angeles: "My first team would be a multicultural dream of Central Casting. We had a couple of Jews, a couple Mexicans, a couple of Italians, Chuck the black kid, and a girl. We made our bases out of contraband cardboard, and we played from the time it was daylight until the time it stopped being daylight. Later on, we added the Sanchez sisters and Eugene and Patsy. Eugene threw like a girl and Patsy hit like a boy, so it was a good tradeoff." He talked about how the game of baseball was one of the important elements that allowed for the "Americanization" of young Chicanos who grew up in Los Angeles during the 1950s and ‘60s, and reminisced about seeing Wally Moon hitting "Moonshots" over the left-field screen at the Coliseum.

        Benitez thanked this year’s and last year’s inductees and concluded by saying, "But this museum is really about us. It’s a museum for us -- the fans that know, that care a little bit more, that enjoy the uniqueness and the character, the things that have been distinguished in our own lives as artists. And leave it to a group of artists to create a place that is fitting for a group of immortals who otherwise don’t fit in. And, therefore, leave it to the joy of those visionaries to create this place which is etched in the profile of their own niche."

Tomas Benitez delivers keynote address at the Induction Day ceremony of the Shrine of the Eternals.

        "In the figure of Moe Berg, we find a very comfortable and near perfect fusion of what we artist types like to call high and low culture. He could converse as easily with diplomats, scholars, and nuclear physicists as well as with unschooled teammates, hack sportswriters, and fans. He could handle a fastball from Lefty Grove as well as a difficult assignment from OSS chief ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan. There is no either/or quality to Moe Berg’s life, nothing that indicates that he had to pursue one vocation rather than another. He was not afflicted with the disease of the specialist. Berg was a scholar and a lawyer; a linguist and a radio show personality; a convivial conversationalist and an utter cipher; an intensely private man and a citizen of the world; a third-string catcher and, if you choose to believe all the reports, a first-rate atomic spy. He is the only person to have both an entry in the Baseball Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Espionage."

        After providing some biographical details pertaining to Berg’s life, Kilchesty concluded by saying, "On his deathbed in 1972, Berg is said to have asked his nurse, ‘How did the Mets do today?’ These are the purported last words of a man whose intelligence, audacity, knowledge, and multiple careers and talents would seem at odds with the grand old game’s simplicity. Yet Moe Berg nevertheless managed to maintain, to the befuddlement of many, a profound interest in the game, its rituals, and its personalities until the moment of his death. The Baseball Reliquary is pleased to recognize the singular contributions that Mr. Morris ‘Moe’ Berg made to American culture by inducting him into the Shrine of the Eternals’ class of 2000."

Jon Blank accepts the induction of Moe Berg into the Shrine of the Eternals.

        Berg’s induction was accepted by Jon Blank, Director of the Jewish Baseball Western Wall of Fame, a peripatetic museum dedicated to preserving the memory of Jewish major league players and instructing the public about the contributions those players have made to American culture. Blank provided additional biographical insight into Berg’s extraordinary life. He considered it a great tribute to Berg that there were those who urged him to think seriously about the position of Supreme Court Justice, while others felt he would make an excellent Commissioner of Baseball. There have been seven books published on the subject of Moe Berg, yet, as Blank remarked, "The question which lingers to this day is what motivated him?   In 1940, while Hitler was consuming Europe and burning books, Moe made a speech at a Boston book fair. He said what Montaigne wrote about Paris describes how he feels about America: ‘I love her so tenderly that even her spots, her blemishes, are dear unto me.’"    

         At the conclusion of his acceptance speech, Blank presented the Baseball Reliquary with a copy of Moe Berg’s declassified OSS file, obtained from the CIA and consisting of several hundred pages of documents.  

        "Then there was the world of politics and social activism and literature and protest and, well . . . all of the things that made the ‘60s great. This was a world you generally didn’t discuss with your baseball comrades; in fact, you wouldn’t say comrade with a fellow baseball player. And when you tried to discuss baseball with your political colleagues, they invariably labeled you a reactionary dilettante who was a puppet symbol of free market capitalism with all its ills. So I sort of couldn’t figure out what my peer group was. In fact, for decades I felt part of an unidentified political party. It’s actually sort of a part conservative social values and democratically socialistic one, except when it’s not, and then it is a party of liberal social values and free market political ones. You get the point -- it’s hard to find someone to vote for. There were few public figures during this time who stood for this marriage of values. Bill Lee was one of them. This is a marriage that seemed to make perfect sense to me: playing baseball and marching against the war in Vietnam. There were many people who had trouble with that combination. And as more and more people reject the simplistic platforms of our two major political parties, Bill Lee’s organic mixture of social and political values feels more and more appropriate."

        Shelton concluded his remarks by emphasizing that with all the interest in Bill Lee’s off-the-field activities, we should not forget that he was an exceptional athlete: "There’s one more thing I want to let the record show. I believe in statistics. By the way, a great fielding .243 catcher [Moe Berg] would make about five million a year today. Bill Lee won 119 games in his 14-year major league career. Very few pitchers have won that many games. He pitched on pennant winners, pennant contenders, and in the World Series. His lifetime earned run average was 3.62, an ERA which today is worth about seven million dollars a year. Let it be known that Bill Lee pitched a game last night in Maine, and might have pitched a doubleheader, but he had a ‘red eye’ he wanted to catch. So ladies and gentlemen, the winning pitcher from last night’s Red Sox Legends victory over the Brunswick Police Department, Bill Lee."

Ron Shelton introduces  Bill Lee at the Induction Day ceremony of the Shrine of the Eternals.

       Lee ridiculed former batterymate Carlton Fisk, who would be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame the following week: "He was a great guy who’s turned into a surly son-of-a-bitch. He was nasty. He was a catcher. All catchers are nasty. It’s like the guy said, Will Rogers never met a man he didn’t like. He never met Jerry Grote. Catchers are like that. But every ballplayer’s life is a game of getting knocked down. You get hit but you get patched back together. [Lee pulls his shirt down over his shoulder to show the audience a scar from a 1976 brawl at Yankee Stadium.] I’ve had my teeth knocked out six times. You know what Stan Williams said? ‘You don’t play with your face, tiger.’"

Bill Lee accepts his induction into the Shrine of the Eternals.

        Finally, Lee acknowledged a few organizations that he feels are attempting to bring sanity to the game: "It’s the Baseball Reliquary, SABR [Society for American Baseball Research], the MSBL [Men’s Senior Baseball League], the Roy Hobbs Baseball League -- these are all people that love baseball and tolerate professional baseball. Because it’s an addiction that we can’t get rid of. But the game is supposed to be played on nice fields, in flannels, with wooden bats,no designated hitter. It’s supposed to be played on afternoons with your father and grandfather. . . . And how come Bill Klem didn’t get a vote? I just thought of that. It was a bad year for umpires. I guess Pam must have taken them all."

        After recounting Postema’s achievements, Braig added, "But as much as this is a testament to Pam’s exemplary performance and commitment, it is also a disgraceful commentary of the sexism and shortsightedness in professional baseball’s Hall of Shame. Women have become astronauts, prime ministers, surgeons, police officers, Supreme Court Justices, and even professional basketball and soccer referees. But major league baseball, even in this new millennium, continues to let untapped talent slip away. If Pam had been a man instead of a woman, she would have gotten a major league contract by 1988, if not sooner!"

Pam Postema accepts her induction into the Shrine of the Eternals.

        Postema concluded: "I want to say I’m really honored to be inducted in your Shrine of the Eternals. I love what this organization is all about. I’ve been called ‘horseshit’ or ‘the greatest’ so much in my career that I don’t go by accolades anymore. But this organization realizes and recognizes my contribution to baseball. We just can’t name what it is. Just maybe I was there -- an aberration, an anomaly, an oddity. I was no gimmick." Postema left the podium and stage to a standing ovation.

(Induction Day photographs courtesy of Larry Goren)