Vossler: A big sports venture
In 1978, I was big into sports, playing amateur basketball, baseball, slow-pitch softball, coaching, running 7 miles a day for the fun of it, and following sports in general. So why not start a sports magazine? I planned big — a Sports Illustrated for North Dakota, but tabloid newspaper size, with black and white photos, covering every aspect of the state’s sports. An early North Dakota Sports Journal’s writing contest winner wrote about rodeo.
Looking back, I must have been half-crazed to try the idea, producing The Journal of 16 pages — four full newspaper sheets — in 9-point type every two weeks, averaging 30,000 words an issue; that‘s half the size of an Agatha Christie mystery novel. I created all the ideas, and wrote three-quarters of the pieces, “On Sports Injuries,“ (knees, Achilles tendons,) game predictions (“The Mad Prognosticator,”) and running (“I want to be out in the hills, the blue bowl of the sky above me, the birds flitting around me, the ground disappearing beneath my running feet,“ said one of my entries). Each issue contained something for everybody — interviews with high school coaches of boys and girls, and players. I even interviewed New York Knick Phil Jackson: (“When I was young I wanted to win so badly I cried after losing a championship game in the seventh grade. I dislike losing intensely. I would have liked to play baseball professionally, but the seasons are too long, and basketball was a sure thing.”)
Other NDSJ included columns like “What Sports Has Done for Me,” Fellowship of Christian Athletes, sizes of gymnasiums and trivia contests, like off whom did Babe Ruth his called-shot home run in the 1932 world series? Charley Root. (Ruth said, “If I’d have missed it, I’d have looked like an awful fool.”) Also biorhythms, fiction, quotes, word games and on and on.
My friend Jim Clark thought the project was a great idea and was kind enough to drive 70 miles from Bismarck the night before the first paper was due at the printer to help me set it together. I had all the copy typed, so we cut and pasted and added headlines. I gave out about 3 a.m., having to teach at Fort Yates the next day. But stalwart Jim worked through the night, and finished it by 7 a.m. as I rose.
I had 1,000 copies printed. Jim and I handed them out at the well-attended State Class B boys’ high school basketball tournament in Bismarck, figuring attendees would read the paper, let others know how wonderful it was, and subscribe.
Yet after each tournament game I was disappointed to see tons of them strewn about with order blanks still intact.
But I still had hope. Having previously owned two bookstores, I had an in with distributor Saks News of Bismarck, who placed copies on newsstands across the state.
After returns for the first issue came in, I was ecstatic. Every one had sold! 1,000! Unbelievable! All that work had paid off in the form of success — and a large check.
But a week later reality set in. Saks needed me to return the check — they’d mistakenly paid me for every copy, not the 50 that actually sold. The handwriting was on the wall, though I didn‘t heed it yet. But eventually the hard work caught up to me. After seven issues in four months, I refunded subscriber monies and stopped publishing.
Though the venture might sound like a failure, I didn’t view it that way. I learned a lot: that things don’t always go as you want them to go; I learned how to interview (the staple of my 40-year-writing career); I learned how to produce many ideas and prose under pressure in a short time; and most of all, I learned the gift of true friendship from Jim.
This is the opinion of Bill Vossler of Rockville, author of 15 books including the e-book "Nature's Way: Writings on the Wild." He can be reached at bvossler0@outlook.com.
This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: Vossler: A big sports venture
