For as long as he can remember, Nate Rueckert has loved baseball. He began to play at age four and spent his whole childhood immersed in the game. He would go on to play throughout his high school and college years, but after his playing days ended he knew he wanted to continue his involvement with the sport. While still a student he decided to combine his passion for the game with his artistic talents to create “America’s Game,” the first of many art pieces he would create using old, tattered baseballs as his medium. The piece—an American flag with a baseball’s seams for stripes and an old mesh uniform for stars—quickly became popular, and for the next decade Rueckert sold prints to baseball fans across the country. His work was highly sought after, and now different “America’s Game” pieces can be found in the homes or offices of many Major League players and managers, the president of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and even former United States President George W. Bush.

Rueckert went on to create other new artwork with old baseballs, including a heart, a cross, and various MLB team logos. He started a company, Baseball Seams Co., to make his work more accessible, and has since sold hundreds of different prints and pieces to customers across the country. However, having shared his story and seen it resonate with people nationwide, he’s now decided to use his talents to help tell the stories of his fellow fans. His next project is to be a five-foot wide map of the United States, pieced together state-by-state. Each state will be made from baseballs from that state, and those baseballs will be provided by individuals who love the game and accompanied by personal stories of what baseball means to them. Rueckert has identified people from about ten states at present, and he’s excited to continue that search and to meet and share stories with those whose lives have been impacted by the sport the way his has.

Rueckert hopes to have the map itself finished by the end of this year, and if all goes as planned he’ll be spending 2017 putting together a coffee table book featuring the 50 stories connected to the piece. The tales he’s been told so far have been inspiring: in Alaska, players and their families banded together to support their coach’s family after his tragic death, and in Iowa, after a fall from a hunting stand paralyzed him from the waist down, a Little League coach used his desire to return to the field as motivation to push through his physical therapy and resume coaching the very next season. Now wheelchair-bound, that coach has nonetheless continued to lead his team in each of the eight years since that incident. Rueckert knows that each state has a similarly moving story, and he knows that using his talent to help those stories be told will produce a powerful piece of art.

With a day job in accounting and two young daughters to deal with, it’s often tough for Rueckert to make his art his top priority. With the help of social media, a corporate sponsor, and, he hopes, a healthy response to his Kickstarter campaign beginning March 1st, he’s confident that he’ll have the time and resources to track down the incredible stories he’s searching for and create the map exactly as he’s imagined it. He believes the strong response to his art is the result of a nostalgic emotional connection many Americans have to the game of baseball. A dad (or mom!) and a son (or daughter!) playing catch in the yard after school or watching a game together in the evening are nearly universal bonding experiences, to the point where they’ve become a staple of American mythology. Rueckert has been amazed and humbled by the powerful response his artwork has so often elicited, and the experience of creating that much joy has pushed him to pursue his most ambitious project yet. If one thing is certain, it’s that baseball fans across the country will be anxiously awaiting the end result.