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It's not just baseball heroes that deserve to be captured and immortalized on card board cards.

Charles DeMotte, "Baseball Heroes and Femme Fatales," The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture: 2002 (Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland & Company, 2002).

Until he wins a World Series, Bonds will not be regarded as being of the same calibre as timeless American baseball heroes like Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Joe Di Maggio.

Just as playing Little League brings a child closer to the world of baseball heroes, playing clarinet and trombone in marching band-again not the best--deepened my appreciation for the magnificent achievements of history's great composers."

The Negro Leagues Revisited: Conversations with 66 More Baseball Heroes by Brent Kelly McFarland & Company, May 2000, $45.00, ISBN 0-786-40975-8

The Hall of Fame (Salon de la Fama) celebrates Mexican baseball heroes on both sides of the border, and the Sports Museum (Museo Deportivo de Monterrey) is dedicated to boxing and rodeo, as well as other sports.

Now they are hawking a comprehensive philosophy of everything--the past, the future, biology, psychology, technology, art, music, movies, baseball heroes, even magazine titles.

If rock stars, movie stars, and baseball heroes can make this sort of money, why not classical artists?

Among the baseball heroes of the early twentieth century was Grover Cleveland Alexander, a right-handed pitcher who between 1911 and 1930 played for the Philadelphia Phillies (NL), Chicago Cubs (NL), and St.

Among the more popular exhibits are Babe Ruth's uniform; Al Kaline's cap; the bat used for Hank Aaron's 500th home run; Ty Cobb's glove; Lou Gehrig's crude first-baseman's mitt; a ball autographed by Mickey Mantle; early scorecards; World Series tickets; and photographs of baseball heroes past and present.

Where it is seen as natural for baseball heroes to achieve greatness through hard work and individual perseverance, those that best exemplified the sport's ideals were also men of honorable character.

I myself spent many happy hours as a child filling out lineups, tossing dice, and trying to get my baseball heroes to do on paper what they too often refused to do on the field.