Terry Cannon and his Monrovia-based Baseball Reliquary got feature treatment in yesterday's New York Times sports pages.

It is not clear how the face of the former Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley came to appear on a flour tortilla in Los Angeles. When on display, it is usually accompanied by a card noting that “the provenance of the tortilla is sketchy.” However, the card continues, “Radio carbon dating indicates that the tortilla is approximately forty years old.”

“It’s an interesting tortilla,” said Terry Cannon, its curator.

Cannon is the president, founder and general instigator of the Baseball Reliquary, a California-based traveling museum and shrine that serves as a puckish alternative to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Based out of Cannon’s home and assorted Southern California storage units, the Reliquary celebrates baseball’s pioneers and free spirits, those individuals whose greatness could never be charted by the Elias Sports Bureau.

“If Borges liked baseball, this is where he’d want to be enshrined,” said Ron Shelton, the director of films like “Bull Durham” and “Cobb.”

Shelton reveals that this year he is voting for legendary 1950s fireballer Steve Dalkowski for the Reliquary's Shrine of the Eternals.

Photo: Ann Johansson for the New York Times