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Article published Jan 19, 2008 Sports Corp. debuts heritage project Attendees at banquet will get first look at DVD of city's sports history.
After eight years of discussion, planning and preparation, the Fort Wayne Sports Corporation will unveil its Fort Wayne Sports Heritage project at the organization's banquet tonight at the Grand Wayne Convention Center.
The project is a DVD of 32 vignettes reflecting on Fort Wayne's sports history. The run time is roughly an hour and 20 minutes, and the material can be displayed in an interactive kiosk.
Cleveland Indians Manager Eric Wedge, who is the subject of a vignette, is the keynote speaker at the banquet.
“I think it will give visitors to the community a feel for the exciting sports history of Fort Wayne and our heritage,” project co-chairman Art Saltsberg of Federated Media said. “And I think it's going to be great for people in the community to take a look at as well.”
The hope is to place the kiosks, which cost between $3,000 and $5,000, at locations throughout the city, starting with Fort Wayne International Airport and the Grand Wayne Convention Center. The kiosks will contain terminals that allow viewers to pick and choose which of the 32 vignettes to watch.
“In some aspects it's like we did a documentary movie,” said Ken Furniss, president and creative director for Cosmic Soup Digital, where the videos were created. “It was that size, but it's cut up into little volumes. So consider the scope of what it takes to make a movie, and that's what we did.”
The project cost about $65,000, paid for by a grant from Sports Corp. member Dick Waterfield and the Waterfield Foundation.
The profiles include:
♦ Individuals, such as Rod Woodson, Johnny Bright, Eric Wedge, Eugene Parker, Everett Scott and past Olympians
♦ Teams — the Fort Wayne Komets, Pistons, Daisies and Wizards
♦ Organizations such as Wildcat Baseball, the Mad Anthonys, Lifetime Sports Academy and run, jane, run
♦ Key events, such as the first night baseball game, the start of the LPGA Tournament and the 1927 New York Yankees exhibition game.
The videos were produced using material from WANE and WPTA, private footage, and pictures from books, Web sites and The News-Sentinel's archives.
“One of the reasons this project was on the drawing board for so long before it took off was the sheer volume of what was required,” Saltsberg said. “We'd have meetings and talk about it, but nothing would ever happen because, I remember how I felt, and everybody was like ‘Where do we start? How are we going to possibly get this done? It sounds great, but how are we going to do it?'
“Ultimately what had to happen was we had to determine a starting point and a series of videos which we were going to do.”
The original goal was to produce 24 sections, but it was expanded to 32. The project is designed so it can be expanded in the future to include more people and events.
“We had to draw the line at some point to get this thing done or it never would have gotten done,” Saltsberg said. “What we have is what we think is a pretty comprehensive start to sports in Fort Wayne. I refer to this as Phase 1 because it's going to have to be added to.”