The Museum was essentially a conglomeration of several mini-museums put into one. The first part Charlie and I toured was the Heisman Room. It housed the original Heisman as well as tributes to all of the former winners. I made sure to set all of the winner's information pages to either Johnny Rodgers or Mike Rozier. Good times.
The next big room was dedicated to the Olympics. It had a bunch of medals, where Charlie and I played guess that site and other big exhibits. There were big displays of Jesse Ownes, Michael Phelps and the Gymnastics team. The funniest display was the history video screen where you could watch clips of record-breakers, innovators and my personal favorite heart breakers. Here come to the hall of greatness and see an absolute failure! (It didn't just show Dan vs. Dave commercials.) My favorite display was the one for the 1992 Dream Team. They had jerseys from Jordan, Karl Malone and Larry Bird. Even cooler was some of the merchandise they had from the era. My favorite was a complete 10-piece Starting Lineup figurine set. (Sorry Christian Laettner, you're not included)
The rest of the exhibit wandered through the rest of the sports — baseball, basketball, football, soccer, hockey, golf. Baseball included the bronzed hat, glove and ball from Don Larsen's perfect game and basketball included Dr. James Naismith's notes on how he came up with basketball.
In the miscellaneous section (which included volleyball, softball, fishing and bowling), they had a cycling test where you could measure yourself against the professionals. Proudly, I can say that I clocked the sixth-best average RPMs for 30 seconds of visitors that day. The other neat interactive exhibit was a balance test, which is supposed to be comparable to downhill skiing. I stayed balanced for just over two seconds, which the security guy said was pretty good and the best that day was three seconds. Score one for me.
The final room was a Hall of Halls exhibit, displaying information about every Hall of Fame you could ever want to visit — like the Sports Art Hall of Fame. Weee.
The Museum was a good time. It encompassed a lot of different sports. The one interesting thing about the SMA is that is will be guaranteed to be different every time you visit because almost all of the artifacts were on loan from people or other museums. But it was a good overview of all the sports. My only complaint was that it cost $24, which included a $3 student discount. If I am paying $24 for a museum tour I better get my own mini-bronze bust at the end. Good times nonetheless.
The only other noteworthy venture of the day was dinner with my friend Collin. He was in NYC finishing up his Master's degree in Political Science at Columbia. (He goes to Northeastern full time). I lived with Collin during my final semester of undergrad and was his boss in Harper Hall the previous year, not to mention he also wrote for the DN. It was good to catch up with him and tell stories of law school/grad school, travels abroad, African movies and other topics. Below is my token picture of the day with Collin.
As a preview, today (Thursday) is the day I've been looking forward to the most out of the NYC portion of my trip. It's NBA Draft time. I have to say the NBA draft is my favorite non-sporting, sporting event of the year. I've been a big fan of it for several years, with help from Chad Ford and Bill Simmons. Expect a full write-up tomorrow. I'm so pumped.
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My prediction for the Magic: With the 22nd pick in the draft, the Orlando Magic select Marreese Speights. This is my prediction as of 6:16pm Thursday night.
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