A.G. Spalding and the Rise of Baseball

<P>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 the 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. <P>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 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.