Online Versions of Spalding Baseball Guides

[KG Erwin]

The Library of Congress has digitized some of these, which are fascinating to peruse. The start point is here:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/spalding/

15 of these have been digitized from the 1889-1939 period. The currently available guides are for these seasons: 1889, 1894, 1895, 1906, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1915, 1917, 1922, 1929, 1930, 1934 and 1939.

An interesting note about these guides is that the accepted dogma of the times is accepted without question. The "Doubleday myth" of baseball's invention is quoted as gospel. They definitely reflect the journalistic conventions of the era.

[HotCornerDave]

Great find, KG. Thanks for posting it here. I've already spent an hour entrenched in the writings of the 1906 season. I can already see that I'll be spending countless hours reading about the history of the game from when it was actually written. Awesome.

[Orcin]

These are really fun to read. Thanks for posting the link, KG.

I have to go with the "higher res image" and zoom to 150% so my poor old eyes can handle the print. It's very tedious to do one page at a time. I wish there was a way to download the whole guide at once to pdf format.

[leegra]

Glenn,

Thanks for this post about the Spalding guides...I was wondering if you have ever seen web copies or digital reproductions of the old Sporting News Official League Guides or The Baseball Register? Long ago, when I was in middle school, I used to subscribe to The Sporting News, and each year, as part of the subscription, they would send a copy of that year's books. Treasures, both of them...I have searched on e-Bay and elsewhere, but never have come across anyone offering one of the two for sale. Do you recall them, and have you ever seen any available; either in book form, or on the web?...Always enjoy your contributions...

lee

[KG Erwin]

Soory, leegra, but I haven't seen online reproductions of either of these. Until a few months ago, old issues of Sporting News were available online at a site called "Paper of Record". However, I think Google bought the site and then removed the entire archive. I DID manage to print off a few pages from 1947 before the archive was yanked.