The Baseball Reliquary is a nonprofit, educational organization "dedicated to fostering an appreciation of American art and culture through the context of baseball history and to exploring the national pastime’s unparalleled creative possibilities." The Reliquary was founded in 1996 in Monrovia, California and is funded in part by a grant from the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
Throughout the year, the Reliquary organizes and presents artistic and historical exhibitions relating to baseball. Recent exhibitions (as of 2007) include a history of Mexican-American baseball in Los Angeles, a detailed replica of Ebbets Field, and a screening of the film The Emerald Diamond about the Irish national baseball team.
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Since 1999, members of the Baseball Reliquary have elected twenty-four individuals to their "Shrine of the Eternals." The Shrine is similar in concept to the annual elections held at the Baseball Hall of Fame, but differs philosophically in that statistical accomplishment is not a criterion for election. Rather, the Shrine’s annual ballot is composed of individuals – from the obscure to the well known – who have altered the baseball world in ways that supersede statistics.
The Baseball Reliquary lists the criteria for election to the Shrine of the Eternals as:
Current as of the 2010 induction.
On March 1, 2007, founder Terry Cannon was featured by The New York Times. The article, by Justin Peters, was titled "A Hall of Fame for Great Stories."