In pondering the financial difficulties of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Rob Neyer wrote that the longterm answer is to get more people to visit each year.

That's the ideal solution, though one that is hampered by the inconvenience of geography. The museum is in Kansas City, Missouri - which is way out there, smack dab in the middle of flyover country.

While it is in one of the larger cities to be home to a sports museum, it is rather isolated compared to other more successful Halls of Fame. Which led us to take a look at the four best known Halls of Fame and how they compare geographically with the Negro Leagues museum.

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Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (Kansas City, Missouri)

Population within 25 miles (radius): 1.5 million

Population within 50 miles: 2 million

Population within 75 miles: 2.4 million

Baseball Hall of Fame (Cooperstown, New York)

25 miles: 141,000

50 miles: 697,000

75 miles: 2.5 million

College Football Hall of Fame (South Bend, Indiana)

25 miles: 606,000

50 miles: 1.3 million

75 miles: 4.5 million

Pro Football Hall of Fame (Canton, Ohio)

25 miles: 1.1 million

50 miles: 3.4 million

75 miles: 5.8 million

Basketball Hall of Fame (Springfield, Massachusetts)

25 miles: 1.2 million

50 miles: 3.1 million

75 miles: 7.9 million

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is a comparatively niche destination with a smaller population base within an hour's drive than any other major Hall of Fame. The only one close is the Baseball Hall of Fame, and that is a destination for hundreds of thousands of fans a year - and just 200 miles from New York City.

Those are real challenges - and ones that will be difficult to overcome in Kansas City. A healthy subsidy from Major League Baseball remains the best short-term solution, until the museum can return to solvency.

(Though I never understood how the College Football Hall of Fame could succeed in South Bend.)