Before the Curse: The Chicago Cubs' Glory Years, 1870-1945

6 FROM TEETOTALING TO EGYPT

6. From Teetotaling to Egypt Ba seba l l h ist or ia ns l ik e Pet er Lev ine, author of A.G. Spalding and the Rise of Baseball, consider Albert G. Spalding as the single most important character in establishing baseball as America’s pasttime. Not only did Spalding perform mightily as a hurler in baseball’s early professional years, posting a mind-boggling 254–46 record from 1871to 1876, the last season of which he pitched for the world champion Chicago White Stockings, but he served as president of the Chicago club for much of the 1880s. He also founded what became one of the world’s most successful sporting goods companies, A.G. Spalding & Brothers. His athletic prowess, business acumen, and daring spirit fit well with the rise of America during this time and the rise of Chicago (the city’s population went from 300,000 in 1870 to 1.7million a mere thirty years later). While business-wise he seemed full of vim and vigor, Spalding’s personal habits seemed, at least outwardly, to reflect the Victorian past more than the rush and boom of an emerging modern America. Little did people know, however , that Spalding carried on an affair for years with Elizabeth Churchill and even had a son with her before he married her two years after his wife Josie’s death.1 He also held prejudices against the Irish. Nonetheless, publicly Spalding strove to show that he championed the morally upright life, in particular one that avoided alcohol. His temperate ways are evident in the first selection here. The article comes from his A.G. Spalding & Brothers’ legendary annual baseball guidebook, and it supports the Spaldingled movement to ship away fast-living, intemperate White Stockings, like Mike “King” Kelly, in exchange for the cleaner-cut young men that became known as the Colts. In addition to his work with the Cubs, in the late 1880sSpalding organized an ambitious world tour to help spread baseball across the globe, described in the second selection. This tour lasted for six months during the 1888–89 off-season—keeping baseball in the papers—and involved a series of games between a “Chicago” club, which was comprised of Chicago-based players, and an “American” club, which was comprised of the game’s leading players from elsewhere. The touring stars, among them “Cap” Anson and the New York Giants star John Montgomery Ward, played in Hawaii, Australia, Egypt, and Europe before returning for action in America. All the while, the savvy Spalding worked to spread his business interests. The man who made it a point to firmly establish the myth that baseball was created in Cooperstown by Abner Doubleday even managed to get the Chicago club to play several innings of extra action in Bristol, England, against some of England ’s leading cricket players, including Dr. W. G. Grace, which the English press seems to have loved. Historian Mark Lamster, author of the book Spalding’s World Tour and who has described Spalding as a mix between P. T. Barnum and Michael Jordan, thinks that the world tour quixotically helped entrench baseball’s reputation as America’s game, partly because so many newspapers carried reports of Spalding’s effort to spread baseball to exotic locales. The tour resonated with the American public. Indeed, on the evening of April 19th, the day on which Spalding, Anson, and the rest of their globetrotters made it back to Chicago, they were welcomed with a massive parade. The players sat in open carriages, flanked by prominent businessmen and others, as An undated cabinet photo of Albert G. Spalding offers a fine look at the young, aspiring ballplayer /businessman. Courtesy Chicago History Museum. 68 f r om t h e c ol t s t o t h e dy na st y 1,000 bicyclists led them through the streets of Chicago en route to the Palmer House for a finale banquet. As baseball historian David Fleitz noted, “More than 150,000 people lined the streets for a glimpse of Spalding, Anson, and the players who carried the American national game around the world.”2 Though the tour might not have made baseball paramount in England and Australia, in the United States it not only reflected the rise of baseball but of America itself. The Lessons of the League Campaign of 1888 Spalding’s Official Baseball Guidebook, 1889 Among...