[Rarebooks] FS: Baseball on Ice Skates and the Disgrace of Gambling on the Game

[Charles Agvent]

[EARLY   BASEBALL  &   LACROSSE].  NATIONAL   CHRONICLE:
         JOURNAL OF AMERICAN SPORTS AND AMUSEMENTS: 29 issues. Boston:
         1869 -  1870.  Large folio (12-1/4" x 17-3/4"). A set  of  29
         nonconsecutive    issues  of  this   early  American   sports
         newspaper  featuring  articles and ads on baseball  in  every
         issue.  This  collection  contains 23 issues from  1869,  the
         earliest  being  23  January, Vol. I, #3, and 6  issues  from
         1870, the  latest being 4 June, Vol. II, #22. The publication
         apparently  ceased  with  issue  #24 of 1870.  The  first  12
         issues  have four pages each; the other 17 have eight  pages.
         The masthead  features a small vignette of a baseball game as
         well as  a  large bat. Lots of baseball  information,  rules,
         excerpts  from  a  baseball novel,  box  scores,  statistics,
         gossip,   and  regional  (including   California  and  Texas)
         reporting  of  games.  One issue features rules  for  playing
         baseball  on  ice  skates!  There is also  much  coverage  of
         billiards,  lacrosse,  bicycling, and other amusements,  with
         one long  feature  front-page  account of a sport  played  by
         Native   Americans  called  "Cherokee   ball  play."  Another
         front-page  story  describes a riot by Negroes in  Charleston
         after the  city's  defeat by the Savannah baseball club.  The
         disgraceful  influence  of gambling on the game is  described
         in an account  of  a match between the Red Stockings and  the
         Haymakers.  With  the  original covers (which  once  housed a
         full run  of  the  periodical) and the  bookplate  of  Samuel
         Strong  Spaulding, son of Elbridge Gerry Spaulding, mayor  of
         Buffalo  and, next to Grover Cleveland and Millard  Fillmore,
         perhaps  the  city's most illustrious citizen of  the  latter
         half of  the  19th  century. Just about Fine copies  of  this
         rare early American sports item.                     $3000.00

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CHARLES AGVENT 
291 Linden Road 
Mertztown, PA  19539-8750 
Voice/Fax: 610-682-4750
agvent at erols.com 
Visit our home page:  http://www.erols.com/agvent