Abstract
This essay examines three disparate sports-related objects – commemorative rings, John Unitas's jacket, and a large baseball card collection – owned by different people. It offers an appreciation of the objects (aesthetically and historically), and considers their rich, polysemic meaning via an interdisciplinary method that is part oral history, part ‘thick description’, part exegesis. In the process we learn that, to their owners – a former elite athlete, the possessor of an heirloom, and an avid collector – these things represent memorable, important accomplishments, experiences, relationships, moments, memories, and values. Broadly speaking, the objects signify authenticity, nostalgia, and sentimentality, as well as a sense of connectedness, memory, and identity. Ultimately, the objects sustain things (ideas, relationships, feelings) that enrich their owners' sense of self and their place in the world.
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