Sports & Leisure - Overview
The nation's passion for sports is obvious every day—at NASCAR races, kiddie soccer matches, and countless other contests. From a handball used by Abraham Lincoln to Chris Evert's tennis racket to a baseball signed by Jackie Robinson, the roughly 6.000 objects in the Museum's sports collections bear witness to the vital place of sports in the nation's history. Paper sports objects in the collections, such as souvenir programs and baseball cards, number in the hundreds of thousands.
Leisure collections encompass a different range of objects, including camping vehicles and gear, video games, playing cards, sportswear, exercise equipment, and Currier and Ives prints of fishing, hunting, and horseracing. Some 4,000 toys dating from the colonial period to the present are a special strength of the collections.
"Sports & Leisure - Overview" showing 1 items.
Lou Gehrig Wiping a Tear
- Description (Brief)
- This photograph was taken on Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day, held at New York’s Yankee Stadium, July 4, 1939. The event honored the retirement of the team’s long-time first baseman. Gehrig (1903-1941,) “The Iron Horse,” set a major league record for consecutive games played (2,130.) During the ceremony, the seven-time All-Star famously called himself “the luckiest man on the face of the Earth,” even though his retirement was precipitated by the onset of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.) Today, ALS is commonly known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”
- Date made
- 1939-07-04
- maker
- Becker, Murray L.
- ID Number
- PG*67.101.101
- accession number
- 272509
- catalog number
- 67.101.101
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center