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 2 items.
Boxing Gloves
- Description
- Muhammad Ali (b. 1942) "The Greatest" gained fame for his boxing skills, charisma and the controversy he generated outside the ring. In 1976 the Smithsonian acquired Ali's boxing gloves and robe for an exhibition on the American Bicentennial, A Nation of Nations. At the donation ceremony, before a crowd of reporters and cheering spectators, Ali predicted that his Everlast gloves would become"the most famous thing in this building."
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1974
- user
- Ali, Muhammad
- maker
- Everlast
- ID Number
- 1977.1073.01
- accession number
- 1977.1073
- catalog number
- 1977.1073.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Joe Louis's Sparring Gloves
- Description (Brief)
- The 1938 Yankee Stadium boxing rematch between American Joe Louis (1914–1981) and Germany’s Max Schmeling was seen as a symbolic contest of American ideals versus those of the Nazis. By easily defeating Schmeling in the first round, Louis became a national hero.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 1980.0683.01
- accession number
- 1980.0683
- catalog number
- 1980.0683.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center