Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards is a non-profit sports museum in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, owned and operated by the Babe Ruth Birthplace & Museum. It opened on May 14, 2005, with the daughter of celebrated baseball player Babe Ruth in attendance. The 22,000-square-foot (2,044 m2) museum is adjacent to the main gate of Oriole Park at Camden Yards and has artifacts and interactive exhibits profiling Maryland’s sports history. Exhibits include such area teams as the Baltimore Orioles, Baltimore Ravens, Baltimore Colts, Maryland Terrapins, Baltimore Elite Giants, Baltimore Black Sox, and the Baltimore Blast.
The museum is housed in the former Camden Station, originally constructed in 1857 by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) as its main passenger station in Baltimore. After being vacant since the 1980s, the depot's exterior was restored in the 1990s as part of the development of the Camden Yards Sports Complex. Later interior renovations and remodeling were made to accommodate the building's adaptive reuse as a sports museum. Geppi's Entertainment Museum, which opened in September 2006, is located on the upper level of the building, directly above Sports Legends at Camden Yards. The nearby Babe Ruth Birthplace & Museum remains in existence as a separate museum on Emory Street, two and a half blocks from Camden Station.
A replica of the Vince Lombardi Trophy from Super Bowl V is located inside the museum. The original trophy from the Colts' 1971 Super Bowl victory was taken by former owner Carroll Rosenbloom when he traded the Colts for the Rams shortly afterwards in a shrewd deal. A replica trophy was later made for the Colts, but in the Midnight Move of 1984, the team was not allowed to keep the trophy. That trophy stayed in the city of Baltimore's possession, and was placed in the Sports Legends Museum.
Famous quotes containing the words sports, legends and/or yards:
“...I didn’t come to this with any particular cachet. I was just a person who grew up in the United States. And when I looked around at the people who were sportscasters, I thought they were just people who grew up in the United States, too. So I thought, Why can’t a woman do it? I just assumed everyone else would think it was a swell idea.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 85 (June 17, 1991)
“Farm boys wild to couple
With anything with soft-wooded trees
With mounds of earthmounds
Of pine straw will keep themselves off
Animals by legends of their own:”
—James Dickey (b. 1923)
“In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty’s torch. In football you run over somebody’s face.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)