If baseball is a highlight of your summer, join a celebration of America’s national pastime at Family Day on Saturday, August 9, 2025. The sport is well represented at the Library through one of the largest and most diverse collections of baseball-related materials in the world.
Activities during the drop-in program (10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) are primarily designed for kids and their families but all ages are welcome — so please do come along. Dress to support your favorite team to fully enter into the spirit of the day! The event is free of charge, but you will need to get free building tickets to enter the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building. A limited number of tickets are available on the day, but registering in advance is the best way to guarantee entry at your preferred time. Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at 202-707-6363 or by emailing [email protected].
The day’s lineup includes a full array of fun activities for everyone to enjoy as they round the Family Day bases. Once you’ve had a chance to survey the field, your first stop will be to pick up materials to create your own baseball card. At second base, you’ll personalize your design with details such as your player nickname and position, your favorite walk-up song and more. Make your way to third and check out a display that shows just a fraction of the many baseball materials held by the Library spanning the earliest days of the sport to the modern game. At home plate you’ll pose for a picture to add to your baseball card. Young participants in program activities will receive a special Family Day giveaway (while supplies last).
We’re excited to host some special Family Day guests from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mascots from D.C.’s own Washington Nationals baseball team will be available for photo ops as they trade their usual surroundings of the Nationals Park baseball stadium for the majestic setting of the Jefferson Building.
If you’re not able to attend on August 9th, you won’t have struck out. You can indulge your love of the game by exploring the many digitized baseball resources available at loc.gov. Here are a few suggestions:
- Check out the extensive collections of baseball cards and early baseball publications.
- For pictures of players from any period, go to the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. You’ll find images of Hank Aaron, Lou Gehrig, Willy Mays, Nolan Ryan, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, and many more famous names.
- The online exhibition Baseball Americana provides a comprehensive look at the history and development of the game and those who played it. If you’re at Nationals Park this summer, you can see items from Library collections exhibited on the concourse behind home plate.
- By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s tells the story of the player who broke the major league color line in 1947 by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. A section on early baseball includes many pictures from the 1860s to the 1920s.
- Scouting reports in the Branch Rickey Papers provide additional insights into the player, manager, executive and Hall of Famer who signed Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers.
- Learn about the trailblazing career of acclaimed Puerto Rican player Roberto Clemente.
- Original baseball films provide a visual historical perspective. The one below from 1926 packs a lot of information into ten minutes. It documents a game between the Cleveland Indians and the New York Yankees – and features Yankees superstar Babe Ruth. In addition to footage of the game itself, it features scenes of the dugout and warmups, a rain delay, and crowds outside the stadium. Slow motion footage shows pitching and batting action, including Babe Ruth’s swing and the “last of the underhand pitchers”, Carl Mays.
- If you’ve seen the 1992 movie A League of Their Own, included in the Library’s National Film Registry, you’re aware of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). From 1943 to 1954, this league kept baseball going when military drafts in World War II led to a shortage of male players. Pictures in the Prints and Photographs Division show women who played even earlier, like these ones from 1919 and 1920. Searching the Library’s digitized newspaper collections provides a contemporary written take on women’s baseball, like this article from 1937 reporting on a game between the Married Women (!) and the Blazers, and a 1948 piece on how an AAGPBL scout assessed female players’ abilities. As you read, you’ll notice how much the way we describe female athletes and their skills has changed over the years.
- There are so many interesting blog posts about different aspects of baseball that it’s difficult to highlight just a few. Their range shows how widely the sport is represented in the collections — and how much our colleagues enjoy writing about it. There are fascinating and quirky facts galore about baseball music, scandals, stadium maps, and how baseballs are constructed. Baseball history shows up in pieces on the Washington Senators team, the game’s early years, and the origins of Little League. A description of the Washington Senators 1924 World Series win includes wonderful newsreel footage of their success. Adversity and challenges are described in these posts about the Negro Leagues, and the Japanese American community’s experience of baseball in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and later, in internment camps.
We hope this small selection of resources available at the Library will expand your baseball knowledge and provide interesting research opportunities. If you are in Washington D.C. on August 9, we look forward to celebrating the sport with you, whether you’re a diehard baseball fan or are simply curious to learn more about the national game. Play ball!
