An oddball Hall of Fame

It's Baseball Hall of Fame week, a triumphant one in the lives of Rich "Goose" Gossage and Dick Williams, who will be enshrined this weekend in Cooperstown, N.Y.

But there's another baseball hall of fame out there, just not as well recognized. The Miami Herald recently published an amusing story about the Baseball Reliquary. It's a California-based organization run by a school librarian that trumpets itself as a “traveling museum of baseball curiosities and wonderments.”

Among the prizes in the collection:

• Bill Veeck’s wooden leg;
• A box of baseballs, each bearing the forged signature of Mother Teresa;
• A desiccated hot dog half-eaten by Babe Ruth;
• The jockstrap worn by famous baseball midget Eddie Gaedel;
• A box of prophylactics with an image of Ted Williams on the box;
• The thong panties the superstitious Wade Boggs demanded his mistress continue wearing throughout a weeklong road trip, during which he hit .652.

And other curiosities, of course. Former union leader Marvin Miller hasn't received enough votes in Cooperstown and has said he doesn't want the Hall of Fame honor anymore. But he gladly accepted the salute by the Reliquary.

“A lot of things they do, the real Hall of Fame in Cooperstown should copy,” Miller, a 2003 Reliquary inductee, told the Herald. “I don’t consider myself an establishment person.”