A. G. Spalding and the Rise of Baseball: The Promise of American Sport

by Peter Levine

A. G. Spalding was a key figure in the professionalization and commercialization of American sports. Co-founder of baseball's National League, owner of the Chicago White Stockings (later Cubs), and founder of a sporting goods business that made him a millionaire, Spalding not only willed baseball to be our national pastime but also contributed to making sport a significant part of American life.
This biography captures the zest, flamboyance, and creativity of Albert Goodwell Spalding, a man of insatiable ego, a showman and entrepreneur, whose life illuminated the hopes and fears of 19th-century Americans. It is also a vivid evocation of the vanished world of 19th-century baseball, recreating a time when it was transformed from a game played on unkempt fields to modern style.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction

199 pages, Paperback

First published April 4, 1985

About the author

There is more than one author with this name in GR. This is Peter^^Levine, author of books on baseball.

Reviews

[Riq Hoelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

For the fan interested in the origins of baseball, this dry account is very likely of interest only to professional historians and Spalding family descendants. The playing days of the main character cover only two short chapters and never evince or even try for any excitement. The remainder covers Spalding's activities as a businessman, promoter, owner, baseball mogul, supporter of the theosophist movement and California senatorial candidate. Never does the book ever make us feel we have been swept away to relive those far off times. Having previously read Where They Ain't: The Fabled Life and Untimely Death of the Original Baltimore Orioles, the Team That Gave Birth to Modern Baseball by Burt Solomon, I felt greatly disappointed in comparison. The author intimates that Spalding, while a ferocious, tireless and successful promoter, probably failed to examine all sides of an issue sufficiently before jumping into frays and that Spalding lived more for the process itself than for the result. But despite all of these struggles, they are not told in an entertaining or moving way. In fact the reader is forced to slog through many, many quotes employing the hyperventilated prose of the day which by now has become quite stale. This book is classified as a baseball book, but really belongs in the American culture or American social history section. Unfortunately I cannot recommend it to anyone except researchers already working in this field who will probably enjoy this dry, spare, heavily-footnoted account. In fact, the way it reads suggests that the author was working not from passion for his subject, but perhaps from happenstance of a lucky archival find or commission, although I don't know the facts of course and am merely speculating.

[Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting bio of AG Spalding. Good perspective on the early game.

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that is essentially the perfect short analytical biography (of the sort recommended by R Posner in his seminal short study of Benjamin Cardozo): you get both Spalding's unusual life, which took him from Midwestern boy to star athlete to magnate to theosophist and politican manqué, and you get it in a concise and extremely readable 150 pages (which means that undergrads will likely complete at least 10% of it, maybe even 20%!). This is how cultural studies should be done.

[Debi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in college. I recommend it to any baseball fan.

[Ron Kaplan · Rating 4 out of 5]

history

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting story about one of the founders of modern baseball