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Spalding Base Ball Guides at Library of Congress

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While browsing through the Library of Congress collections, I came across a set of Spalding Base Ball yearbooks from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Absolutely fascinating stuff. Unfortunately, actually reading them is a bit of a pain. First click on the guide that you want, then click "View text," then click the first link under "Table of Contents," and then click on "Page image." You'd think a library could figure out an easier interface, especially the big one in Washington. I looked at the ones from 1929 and 1917. The '29 volume has an essay on the history of the curve. It says that curveballs were developed and thrown during the "formative" underhand period, under the pre-1858 rules. Cummings was the first pitcher known to commonly use one in top-level play, c. 1867-1870. Interestingly, I didn't know that overhand pitching wasn't legalized until as late as 1884, and that the modern foul-strike rule didn't come in until 1901. The '17 volume includes a long tirade against the recently dead Players' League and the Fraternity, the players' union of the time. Without coming right out and referring to gambling and corruption, the guide is very harsh on players doing less than their best. Allegedly, they do so because with unionization, they don't care who wins the games. The guide twice explicitly accuses NL champion Brooklyn of dumping a late-season series to Philadelphia, and then of throwing the 1916 World Series to Boston. Casey Stengel seems to have been one of the few honest players on the team, the only one who hit over .300 for the Series. Flip through the book, and the tone shows that the owners and executives are running scared, that they feel they've lost control of the players, who can't even be trusted to play honestly. Catastrophe seems to loom.