SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS February 10, 2002

Museum seeks S.F. building for collection

Roving Display

Last year, many of the items were displayed at several sites in the Bay Area, including twice at Network Associates Coliseum. But Avila, a native of New York's Spanish Harlem, wants to take his vision a step further. "We're mature now to the point where the building is essential," said who works for the Department of Veterans Affairs. "We took our baby steps... Now we're ready to have an actual place where we can have our offices, and set up our memorabilia and have people come in.

Paying Homage

Avila was attending a Yankees-Baltimore Orioles game in 1992 when he realized that Hispanics were contributing to the game more than ever before. He wanted a museum to bring greater awareness of Hispanics' contribution in baseball. Ultimately, he wants to raise $10 million to $15 million to finance a 55,000-square-foot building as a permanent site, ideally near Pac Bell Park. But until then he would be happy with an existing building.

Avila, who is of Puerto Rican descent, is working with Giants Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, who is on the museum's board of directors, Giants Spanish-language broadcaster Amaury Pi-Gonzalez, the treasurer, and San Francisco Suprevisor Gerardo Sandoval, who is trying to locate a site.

Hispanics accounted for 30 percent of the players in major league baseball last year, Avila said.

Goal Is Education

Through research he found 11 players of Hispanic descent in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. They include Cepeda, Lefty Gomez, Luis Aparicio, Juan Marichal, Rod Carew, Tony Perez, Martin Dihigo, Reggie Jackson, Roberto Clemente, Al Lopez and Ted Williams, whose mother was of Mexican and French descent. All of them are automatic inductees into the museum's hall of fame and will be honored at the first Hispanic Legends of Baseball preseason gala Feb. 23 at the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco. "I want to be able to make this the premier Hispanic museum in the United States," Avila said. "That's my goal, to educate the children, to educate grown-ups, to make baseball proud of us".

Group To Enshrine Hispanic
Baseball Players

By PAMELA LEWIS
Special to the Mercury News

Wanted: a building in San Francisco large enough to house a museum honoring Hispanic baseball players; preferably near Pacific Bell Park; ideally available before the baseball season.

Finding a building is the next step in the grand plan of Gabriel Tito Avila Jr., a retired Air Force reserve officer who grew up a New York Yankees fan. Avila is the founder of the Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum, which will honor its first hall of famers in a fundraiser Feb. 23.

It's been 10 years since he envisioned a museum paying homage to Hispanic players in the major and minor leagues and three years since he incorporated the nonprofit museum. Avila still lacks a home to display the more than 3,000 memorabilia items in storage thay have been donated and purchased.

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