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

Great book that shows how A G Spalding built baseball as a business and not only as a sport.

Fun for fans

Came fast and in great shape. I am very happy with my product. It came in the time it said.

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.

Well rearched and useful as a comparative source for American cricket.

期待通りでした。宣伝文句に偽りがなかった。体育大の大学院生に進めたい。