Albert Goodwill Spalding did it all:  One of baseball's earliest stars as a pitcher, involved in the formation of the National League; manager and then owner of the Chicago White Stockings, who became the most visible and powerful figure in baseball in the late nineteenth century. Spalding created guide books on baseball that served as a source for the history of the game for sixty-five years. With his younger brother, he formed what became the largest sporting goods empire in the world. The last fact perhaps the most influential.

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Key References: By Spalding - Spalding's Official Baseball Guide, 1876-1942; A History of Baseball - America's National Game, 1911; A. G. Spalding and the Rise of Baseball: The Promise of American Sport by Peter A. Levine, 1985; Spalding's World Tour:  The Epic Adventure That Took Baseball Around the Globe – and Made it America's Game by Mark Lamster, 2006.

 

 

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