An unaccustomed visitor to the Gaceta may, with some justification, wonder exactly what class of scribe feels drawn to a project with such a peculiar aim. There is, after all, plenty of baseball that can be warmly and fully chronicled without resorting to reconstructive writing.

Yet there is a coterie of valiant souls for whom the past is a friendlier field more engagingly traveled. Each of these rarae aves, as will soon be obvious, has been permitted to describe themselves.