Baseball As America is currently on exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Learn more about the exhibit in Los Angeles.

I think there are only three things that America will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization: the Constitution, jazz music and baseball. They're the three most beautifully designed things this culture has ever produced.

— Gerald Early, Scholar

Baseball As America is a national celebration of America's romance with baseball. This unprecedented four–year program, mounted by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in association with 10 of the nation's leading museums, is a once-in-a-lifetime venture that only the Hall of Fame is capable of creating.

The centerpiece of the celebration is a blockbuster exhibition entitled Baseball As America, which marks the first time the treasures of the Hall of Fame will leave their legendary home in Cooperstown to tour the country. This ground-breaking exhibitiond at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, on March 16, 2002, and will travel to nine other cities across the United States.

Baseball As America represents the richness of baseball as the American pastime and celebrates enduring American values: freedom, patriotism, opportunity and ingenuity. It appeals to a broad spectrum of the public — from children just learning to throw a ball to the life-long fan — and, like the game itself, draws people of all ages and across all cultural heritages. It provides a revealing, inspiring, humorous and dramatic perspective on America's Game and, in so doing, fosters a new appreciation not only of baseball, but of our national character.

Baseball and America have grown up together. In exploring immigration, industrialization, integration and technology, the exhibition reveals how baseball has served as both a public reflection of, and catalyst for, the evolution of American culture and society. Baseball As America also examines how the American landscape, our language, literature, movies, and summertime living all bear the mark of a 19th-century game that continues to be identified with our nation's values and aspirations.

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© 2001 National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc.