(Baseball / American Sports / History) SPALDING, Albert G. America's National Game: Historic Facts Concerning the Beginning, Evolution, Development and Popularity of Base Ball With Personal Reminiscences of Its Vicissitudes, Its Victories and Its Votaries. New York: American Sports Publishing Company, 1911. FIRST EDITION. 8vo - 8" x 5-3/8".
Original blue cloth covered boards with bright gilt-stamped titles and a decorative vignette of Uncle Sam holding a baseball bat to the front cover, with gilt titles to the spine. Plain endpapers. xix, [1], 542 pp., plus [5] fold-out plates. Extensively illustrated with a total of 114 black-and-white drawings and photographic plates, including 5 fold-out plates, and cartoons by Homer C. Davenport. This copy features a notable physical pen-to-paper addition, inscribed by the author in black fountain pen ink on a blank preliminary leaf: "To Mr. E. A. Steininger / with my compliments / A. G. Spalding / New York / Oct. 10 1911". Accompanied by a formal Letter of Authenticity issued by PSA/DNA Authentication Services.
The physical condition of the item is graded VERY GOOD + (utilizing the standard antiquarian book grading scale for works on paper). The original blue cloth binding remains tight and structurally sound, showing only light rubbing to the head of the spine and corners, with minor wear to the tail of the spine. Internally, a minor bump to the upper front fore-edge of the text block slightly affects the outer margins of the first five leaves (comprising the inscription page, half-title, tissue-guarded portrait, frontispiece, and title page). The text block and fold-out plates otherwise remain bright, clean, and crisp.
Albert Spalding and the Codification of the National Pastime
Published just four years before his death, Albert G. Spalding’s monumental work stands as the definitive early history of baseball written by one of its foundational pioneers. Spalding’s perspective was unique; he transitioned from a star pitcher in the 1870s to the co-founder of the A.G. Spalding & Bros. sporting goods empire, and eventually to a powerful executive shaping the National League. America's National Game serves partly as a historical record and partly as an ideological manifesto, tracing the sport from its evolutionary roots through its crucial growth in the military camps of the American Civil War, the formation of early professional clubs, and the international baseball tours. Melded with the sharp, political cartoons of Homer C. Davenport, the volume famously codified the "Mills Commission" narrative asserting baseball's purely American origins, establishing the book as an essential text for understanding the cultural mythos of the sport.
Presentation Copies of 1911 and Ephemeral Survival
While standard trade copies of Spalding's history circulated widely among sports enthusiasts in the early twentieth century, authentic presentation copies inscribed by Spalding at the time of publication are genuinely scarce. This specific volume was inscribed in New York on October 10, 1911, concurrently with the book's initial release and during the height of the 1911 World Series between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Athletics. The presence of the accompanying five large fold-out plates—which detail historical team line-ups, early championship rosters, and stadium maps—presents a structural fragility point; these plates were frequently torn or misfolded by original readers. This copy remarkably preserves all five inserts intact, and its historical integrity is fully supported by the included PSA/DNA Letter of Authenticity.
THIS EXCEPTIONAL, AUTHOR-INSCRIBED 1911 FIRST EDITION OF ALBERT G. SPALDING'S SEMINAL BASEBALL CHRONICLE, COMPLETE WITH ALL FIVE FRAGILE FOLD-OUT PLATES AND A PSA/DNA LETTER OF AUTHENTICITY, REPRESENTS A CRITICAL ACQUISITION FOR INSTITUTIONAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OR EXTRAORDINARY PRIVATE COLLECTIONS DEVOTED TO THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN SPORTS, EARLY BASEBALL MEMORABILIA, OR THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICANA.
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