Arthur Rickerby worked his way through Duke University by making and selling photographs of Duke athletes and games. He was so good that Acme Newspictures (later United Press International) guaranteed him a job in its New York bureau upon graduation. The Second World War interfered, but eventually he took them up on that offer.

   It was a splendid time to cover sports from a New York City base. The Dodgers were still at Ebbetts Field, The Yankees only a subway ride away. West Point football, Madison Square Garden, the Polo Grounds: all were venues Rickerby came to know intimately.

   In the late 1950s Rickerby left UPI to become a free lance photographer and was immediately swamped with work. Assignments from Sports Illustrated, Sport and a host of other publications kept him busy until LIFE Magazine persuaded him to join its staff in 1961. After that, a whole new world of sports coverage opened for him. LIFE gave him the freedom to document, not just one game, but a wide view of the place of athletes and sports events in our culture.. His essays on football fueled America's acceptance of that sport. Others, on hockey, La Crosse, auto racing, the Olympics, etc. captured the essence of these endeavors.

   Arthur Rickerby began his career making pictures of college teams. His last assignment, from LIFE, thirty years later, was coverage of Willie Mays. On the pages that follow, only the very tip of the iceberg is shown — some 200 classic images of our country's mid-century athletes and the games they played. There are thousands more in the Rickerby Collection archives. Feel free to ask about your favorite sport, its stars, and its major events.