A League of His Own

Albert Goodwill Spalding became the initial star pitcher of the first professional sports association, cofounded baseball’s National League, founded the world’s greatest sporting goods empire, owned the team that became the Chicago Cubs, organized an around-the-world tour to promote baseball, broke the first players union, and crushed three rivals of the National League before retiring to San Diego. A monopolist in true Gilded Age fashion, he sought to create a bicycle trust even as he battled advocates of a baseball trust. A moralist who railed against alcohol and gambling, he sired a child with a long-time mistress. He was a man of many firsts in the fields in which he competed: the highest winning percentage as pitcher, first player to receive a percentage of gate receipts, the first player to openly wear a glove while playing (and, by virtue of his status, to make it acceptable for other players to wear gloves), the captain of the first NL champion, the founder of the first vertically integrated sporting goods firm, the first to build a chain of specialty retail stores, the first leader of the U.S. Olympic movement. This is the first comprehensive biography of Albert Goodwill Spalding’s fascinating life, including his compulsion to put his name on every ball, racquet, discus, bicycle, football, bat, hat, and mask his company produced.