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.