sports

Sports, Recreation, & Leisure:  Library of Congress Digital Collections
Mostly useful for the history of baseball.

“Sports Through the Nineteenth Century.” Encyclopedia of American Social History. Ed. Mary Kupiec Cayton, Elliott J. Gorn, and Peter W. Williams. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993. U.S. History In Context. Web. 18 Sept. 2013.
Great overview.

Riess, Steven A. “Sports.” Dictionary of American History. Ed. Stanley I. Kutler. 3rd ed. Vol. 7. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003. 507-512. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 18 Sept. 2013.
Starts at the very beginning of sports in America.

Powell, John. Great Events from History – The Nineteenth Century. Pasadena, Calif: Salem Press, 2007.
Powell, John, and Frank N. Magill. Great Lives from History – The Nineteenth Century. Pasadena, Calif: Salem Press, 2007.
Use these links to find articles in the online version of this reference source.

Levinson, David, and Karen Christensen. Encyclopedia of World Sport. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Print.
Great 4-volume set.   Its at 796.03 – unless we have it set aside on a cart.

Christensen, Karen, Allen Guttmann, and Gertrud Pfister. International Encyclopedia of Women and Sports. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2001. Print.
Great 3-volume set.   Its at 796.082 – unless we have it set aside on a cart.

The Nineteenth Century in Print (Library of Congress)
Searchable, large collection of digitized books and magazines published during the nineteenth century.