SPORTS AS
RELIGION

SPORTS MUSEUM OF AMERICA
SETS NEW STANDARD

© 1989 Arturo DiModica

"CHARGING BULL" READY FOR THE  OPENING

You probably don't know

but you certainly should

America's first ball field

stands at the southern

tip of Broadway in

Lower Manhattan

Bowling Green

Bowling Green Park is where Sports was first ever officially played in  North America. Now beginning Tuesday, May 6, 2008, it will be the site  of the first ever Sports Museum of America. How perfect is that ? VERY  PERFECT !

Thank the Common Council of New York back in 1733 for having the vision  to respond to citizen requests to create a well maintained surface for  the public good to play the only Sport known to the colonists Lawn  Bowling, with the creation of aptly named Bowling Green Park 275 years  ago this year America's first ball field came to be.

Now exactly 275 years later a modern day visionary Philip Schwalb, with  the able assistance of many others, has come to Bowling Green to create  the first great Sports Museum of America which will officially open  today, May 6, 2008, with pomp & ceremony.

What the Sports Museum of America accomplishes which none of the many  single Sport museums around the country do - what this new Museum does  like none ever has is present Sports as an all encompassing experience.  Whatever Sport or Sports any of us favor the Sports Museum of America  weaves a mosaic a tapestry that unites ALL Sports into a larger vision  of the place of Sports in our lives individually and as a society.

And even more it is FUN

it is EXCITING just as

Sports is meant to be

As you tour this Museum and its spectacular multi-media venues as you  do you understand, appreciate, embrace the UNITY of Sports all Sports  and the past, present and now the future of Sports which the Sports  Museum of America will become an integral element. And of course our  Sports are not some abstract exercise rather all Sports are the  Athletes who have played those Sports in the past, do play them today  and will tomorrow.

The Human Experience of Sports has NEVER been explored with the depth  and power with which it is here at the Sports Museum of America. In  effect for the hours that you explore this Museum you are living, you  are immersed in a universe of Sports with all its glory, triumphant,  bitter defeat and longing. Those magic moments in baseball, football,  basketball, hockey, boxing, tennis, the list goes on and on. The point  being that here at the Sports Museum of America you will come to  appreciate and understand the underlying unity of Sports as no one in  America indeed no one on Earth ever has before.

In effect as a result Sports

all Sports all the time

is experienced here at 26 Broadway

at Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan

as the kind of religious experience

all Sports ultimately are for us

What is Religion ? It has many definitions. But stripped bare ALL  religions produce an experience that takes us beyond ourselves. Into  another dimension of time and space as Rod Serling would have said.  Whatever our own Religion it brings us a Peak Experience becomes a  gateway into a world greater than our day to day realties while at the  same time showing us that in many ways our day to day realities are  part of that Greater Reality.

WELL that is EXACTLY what Sports does for us

it is outside of our daily experience but as

much Sports is a part of our daily realities

except it is easy to miss the point but

you cannot escape that Greater Reality in

 the Sports Museum of America you will

 enter into a CATHEDRAL of Sports

when you enter the Sports Museum

of America and by the time you

emerge you will now appreciate

Sports as you never have before

how your Sports and all Sports

are One why Sports is as

inspiring as any religion

because Sports has risen

to become our religion and

The Sports Museum of America

will have you understand and

experience for yourself

why it is so