Selling Baseball

**Booklist Starred Review** A fascinating look back on baseball’s humble beginnings and its transformation into the national pastime, told through the lives of two men who dominated the game. The nineteenth century was a time of rapid growth and development for the game of “base ball,” and players George Wright and Albert Spalding were right in the thick of it. These two young men, the first superstars of the professional game, won the hearts of a country in search of a unifying spirit after a devastating civil war. Selling Baseball: How Superstars George Wright and Albert Spalding Impacted Sports in America breathes fresh energy into baseball’s beginnings with this captivating tale of two vibrant personalities whose friendly rivalry was integral to the rise of the professional game. While they came from starkly different backgrounds—Albert was a young, gangly pitcher from the country’s rural heartland and George the consummate athlete from the New York City area—their captivating performances on the field, along with their promotion of the game and of sports equipment, fed the public’s insatiable appetite for leisure-time pursuits and helped grow professional baseball to unprecedented heights. George Wright and Albert Spalding’s stories are masterfully woven together to paint a sweeping picture of the early days of professional baseball, the evolution of sports as a business, and the advancement of sports equipment and the sporting goods industry. Their rise as players and businessmen mirrored the rise of a nation that would lead the world in the coming century.