Photographs, scorebooks, government records, broadsides, letters, and equipment reflect Ohio sports history. Baseball is particularly well documented, with collections relating to amateur, college, and professional players and teams. High school and college football are also well represented. A number of collections relate to bicycling, both with high wheel and safety wheel bicycles.

Unusual items in the category include an 1845 Cleveland city ordinance banning baseball in Public Square, a photograph of the Ohio State University's first football team in 1890, an 1893 Elmore Roadster bicycle made in Elmore, Ohio, an 1894 scorebook from the Cincinnati Base Ball Club Score Book, and a condolence letter from Babe Ruth to Florence Kling Harding following the death of President Warren G. Harding in 1923.

Background

Sports and athletic activities have been important part in the lives of Ohioans since the state's settlement in the 1780s. As the industrial economy grew and large cities became more dominant, organized athletic activities began to develop. After the Civil War, and especially at the end of the nineteenth century, professional baseball and football teams were established, and amateur sports clubs formed in the growing numbers of city gymnasiums.

German immigrants brought to Ohio athletic traditions of their homeland that had a significant impact on American culture. Educator Friedrich Ludwig Jahn developed a series of gymnastic exercises, to which he applied the German verb turnen. Clubs devoted to improving mind and body through physical training were called Turnvereins, and participants were known as Turners. Cincinnati was home to the first Turnverein in the United States, established in 1848. Classes were offered for all ages and both men and women participated. The clubs also played an important social function, serving as a meeting place for German-speaking immigrants. Swedish gymnast Pehr Henrik Ling developed another popular style of gymnastics that differed from Jahn's in its use of moveable equipment such as hoops, clubs, and small balls rather than stationary equipment. The two methods of exercise were combined and introduced into the public schools in the late 19th century.

Baseball features prominently in early Ohio athletic history. Cincinnati was a leading city in the development of this sport. In 1866, the Cincinnati Live Oaks played the Brooklyn Eagles in Cincinnati's first inter-city match. In 1869, the Queen City developed the nation's first professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings (now known as the Cincinnati Reds). The players were paid $9,300 a year, an exorbitant salary for the time. The players won 130 straight games in their first few seasons. They were so popular that President Benjamin Harrison, an Ohio native, attended a Reds game in Washington, D.C. in 1892, cheering the Reds to a 7 to 4 victory. Some of the Red Stockings' star players even became nationally known, most notably pitcher Asa Brainard, who was so well regarded that top pitchers on all baseball teams of the 1870s were known as "asa" (which passed into common slang as "ace"). The team was a charter member of the National League, which formed in 1876. In 1919 the Reds won their first World Series; they also won in 1940, 1976, and 1990.