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.
Field Hockey Stick
- Description
- The field hockey stick is the most important piece of equipment used in the game of field hockey. It can be made from a variety of materials but is traditionally made of a hard wood, such as ash. Composite materials, including fiberglass, carbon, graphite and Kevlar can also be used. Field hockey sticks are only made for right handed players. They have a toe with a rounded edge which faces the right while the flat part of the toe faces to the left. The stick length varies according to the player’s height and the weight may vary anywhere from 18 to 25.9 ounces. The grip is composed of different materials, such as suede and rubber, to limit the amount of moisture on the stick. The stick shown here was used by the donor, Meg Galligan, while playing field hockey for Boston College between 1974 and 1978. It is made of wood and wrapped with cotton tape, for grip, at the top of the stick and plastic tape, for strength, at the bottom of the stick.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1974
- date made
- ca 1974
- user
- Galligan, Meg
- maker
- Sport Craft
- ID Number
- 1982.0400.01
- catalog number
- 1982.0400.01
- accession number
- 1982.0400
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center