Cooperstown continued

Yesterday my curiosity got the better of me and I climbed up in the attic to look through my "archives" for the story about the baseball board game collection that is going to be traveling to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The truth is, I could remember bits and pieces of the collection but very little about the collector and it was bothering me. Lo and behold, I found it neatly filed with all my collection stories that I had moved to the attic about three years ago.

The date of the story is September 4, 1997 and it originally appeared in the Arts & Leisure magazine section of the local newspaper which could have been one reason why I couldn't remember it. The story was the feature in the section and got a beautiful two page spread. And even more astounding, among my notebooks (reporters never throw anything away!) was the collector's phone number at work, which, on a lark, I called. The voice mail was indeed the same collector who said he was in the office and would return the call. So I left a message.

Long story short, the collector and I had a wonderful chat yesterday afternoon and the exhibit, which opens this Spring in Cooperstown and runs for a full year, is the culmination of thirty years of collecting. He is considered the leading authority on baseball board games and in fact wrote a book about their history in 1993. And this will be the only time in the history of the Baseball Hall of Fame that the space, in which between 70 and 75 of his pieces are going to be displayed, will be devoted to just one person. There was no doubt in my mind that the story deserved a follow up on a national level.

So I dashed off an email to Agent Number 2 to see if he could help with placement only to learn rather quickly that this type of stuff was out of his "league." (No comments needed.) In the interim, I had already queried Smithsonian magazine and later last night, the Us Air in flight magazine, thinking that both were good homes for the story. Now comes the waiting--at least 3 to 4 weeks, assuming they read their email. I will probably send the same query to Southwest's magazine as well but that seems to be a tougher sell. The writer's guidelines indicate it is "tightly scripted" with little room for freelancers. But you never know.

If all else fails, I know I can place the story locally but I think it deserves a bigger audience. The collector also told me that they are looking for an original version of the story so I am off to the local newspaper to peruse their archives later this afternoon.

A couple of lessons here. First, keep good records. Second, good stories never die; they just get better with age. And third, even a great story is a tough sell on the national level. On some level everything comes down to who you know so if anyone knows anyone anywhere who might have some connection to a national vehicle for this story, let me know.