[Rarebooks] FS: The first official baseball rule book, 1867, by Henry Chadwick, illustrated

[Charles Agvent]

  CHADWICK, Henry. HANEY'S BASE BALL PLAYER'S BOOK OF REFERENCE 
CONTAINING THE REVISED RULES OF THE GAME FOR 1867, WITH AN EXPLANATORY 
APPENDIX TO EACH RULE, TOGETHER WITH FULL INSTRUCTIONS FOR UMPIRES AND 
SCORERS, AND ALSO FOR PITCHING, BATTING AND FIELDING. THE WHOLE FORMING 
A STANDARD AUTHORITY ON ALL POINTS OF THE NATIONAL GAME. [The first 
official baseball rule book]. New York: Haney & Co., 1867. First 
Edition. Small octavo (3-3/4" x 5-7/8") in original green wraps 
depicting three ballplayers on the front holding a bat and examining the 
rule book; [ii], 139, [iii] pages, plus covers. The issue published just 
nine years earlier in 1858 was the FIRST OFFICIAL BASEBALL RULE BOOK. 
Its author, Henry Chadwick, was the sport's first great journalist and a 
leading figure in the development of the game. Illustrated with about a 
dozen engravings in the text including full-page depictions of a 
regulation baseball field and a baseball pitcher. Includes not just 
rules but much advice on how to form and manage a club as well as 
specific hints on how to field, pitch, and bat. With several pages on 
how to play baseball on the ice! Owner name of E. S. Hughes of South 
Trenton, New York in light pencil on the top of the front cover and 
title page. Light foxing to some pages, heaviest on the bulked fore-edge 
of the text. The front cover has an inch-long vertical closed tear along 
the spine edge and a small triangular piece torn off the fore-edge and 
still present, laid in loosely, with no loss in either case. A Very Good 
copy of a scarce and important baseball book.         $6,000.00

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