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What: “Baseball as America”

Where: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

When: Through Dec. 15

Among the displays in “Baseball as America” is Henry Aaron’s 1974 Atlanta Brave home jersey. Resting beneath Aaron’s familiar No. 44 is a 1996 letter from a fan explaining how he chose to name his adopted son Aaron Henry. The man wrote that he wanted his son to grow up to be as dignified and proud as Aaron was when he chased Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record.

Contrasting the fan’s letter is a threatening letter deriding Aaron’s achievements and vowing that no African American would break Ruth’s record.

It is perhaps the most poignant display in the exhibit, which features a large collection of artifacts that for the first time are on loan from the Baseball Hall of Fame and Library in Cooperstown, N.Y. The Aaron display captures the meaning of the American game in a single, convincing visual. The exhibit also features a number of significant artifacts that will please both trained eyes and everyday fans. Among the artifacts is George Brett’s bat from the infamous “pine tar game” in 1983; a T-206 Honus Wagner card, the rarest and most expensive baseball card; a ball dating to the 1860s said to be used by Abner Doubleday; and one of Sandy Koufax’s four Cy Young Awards.

But the soul of the exhibit is the interaction between country and game: a crude home plate fashioned from scrap wood and used in a World War II Japanese American internment camp; a letter from Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy smoothly soliciting the political support of activist Jackie Robinson; a bound copy of the Dowd Report with the simple inscription “In the Matter of Peter Edward Rose,” and a baseball pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center.