Sports
From football scrambles to underhand baseball pitches and legendary tennis matches, sports-themed mechanical banks celebrate athletic moments across generations. Whether honoring Harvard-Yale rivalries or the Battle of the Sexes, these banks bring the thrill of the game to every coin drop.
Game On: Sports in the World of Mechanical Banks
The panoply of sports is well represented in mechanical banks. Banks representing football, baseball, hockey, soccer, rugby, golf, tennis, horse racing, car racing, fishing and basketball are common. To highlight just a few, the Calamity bank represents a game of football with the runner advancing down the field of play with two lineman attempting to tackle him. It is rumored that it was inspired by an early Harvard-Yale game as the figures were painted in the Harvard and Yale colors. The Darktown battery and its successors, the Hometown Battery and the Baseball Bank represent baseball. Of note, the pitcher pitches underhand as they did in organized ball in the last half of the 19th century.
The Bobby Clark Bank is a modern bank, which was created when the Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup. Similarly, the Duel at the Dome by Charlie Reynolds represented a monumental game in 1992 between the then Washington Redskins and the Buffalo Bills. The Birdie Putt bank represents golf and continues to be reproduced again and again. Finally, the momentous tennis match of the 70s between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King in the battle of the sexes is immortalized in a tennis themed bank.