Cliff Kachline never played Major League baseball. But for 14 years, the Lexington resident was a fixture at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

"My job title was historian. That encompassed a lot of things. Just a few years later the Hall of Fame, which was very antiquated at that point, decided to expand and modernize and I was semi in charge of that project."

Before becoming a historian at Cooperstown, Cliff spent 25 years on the editorial staff of the Sporting News. But those 39 years in baseball probably wouldn't have happened if not for a discovery Cliff made as a 12 year–old in his neighbor's garage.

"He worked on the railroad and managed to pick up a lot of papers. I asked permission to look through them and he said, ‘Fine’. I came across a copy of The Sporting News and wow! That really sent me."

One man's trash is another man's treasure. A few years later, Cliff was in high school in Quakerstown, Pennsylvania, when he noticed a mistake in the Sporting News. He wrote the publisher, who responded by offering Cliff a job as a proof reader. And a career was born.

"That led to everything. I checked the Baseball Register in 1941. In 1942 The Sporting News came out with the Baseball Guide for the first time, I checked that. And then, of course, in 1943 is when I was invited to joint the staff there."

Kachline has attended 150 World Series games, including the night Reggie Jackson became Mr. October in 1977 with 3 homers against the Dodgers. And he witnessed Enos Slaughter's mad dash to win game-7 for the Cardinals in 1946.

For a time he was the president of the St. Louis chapter of the Baseball Writers Association and is one of the founding members of the Society for American Baseball research.

Oh, and he still subscribes to The Sports News.