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Two volumes. Containing a continuous run of 52 weekly issues (16 pages each): Vol. 19 (August 22, 1868 February 13, 1869); Vol. 20 (February 20, 1869 August 14, 1869). Folios (11" x 16"). Bound in modern black cloth over boards, leather spine labels lettered in gold, wove endpapers, with an 1894 "Jockey Club" bookplate on each of the front pastedowns. A scarce, handsomely bound set of 52 issues of this important sporting newspaper containing accounts of horse races, billiards, cricket matches, hunting and fishing, boxing, and baseball: it was the first periodical to regularly cover baseball. This run contains 36 issues that feature a weekly column covering the ongoing baseball seasons of 1868 and 1869. The articles provide detailed accounts of the games, including printed box scores, and of the rivalries between the New York Mutuals, Brooklyn Atlantics, Philadelphia Athletics and other popular teams throughout the country, including the Cincinnati Red Stockings: baseball s first all-professional team in 1869, with ten salaried players. The Red Stockings went on to post a 57 0 record that year, the only perfect season in professional baseball history. Here are but a few short examples of the excitement generated by the Red Stockings in 1869: a full page of baseball coverage from the June 19, 1869 issue opens with a long, detailed account of all nine innings of a game played between the Mutuals and Cincinnati: "An Unprecedented Game. On Tuesday … the Red Stockings as they are familiarly called, representing Cincinnati and champions of the West, met the Mutual Club, of New York, and champions of the United States, at Williamsburg … Never in the annals of the game was such a performance, and never such a score …" Another long report reflecting on the passions aroused by the Red Stockings was published in the June 26, 1869 issue: "The Red Stockings This marvelous club and their repeated successes have been themes for newspaper-men. Some journals have eulogized the players, and others have spoken unkindly of them. It was reserved for Philadelphia, however, to make the meanest attack on them, wherein it was sought to belittle them, and all their great victories set down as mere chance work …" This is how the *Spirit of the Times* summed up the Red Stockings perfect season in its July 24, 1869 issue: "Reconstruction. The march of General Sherman through the Southern States was fraught with no more disorganizing elements to the Southern army than the march of the Red Stockings through the base-ball districts of the East demoralized the camps here …" Both volumes provide entertaining and informative accounts of professional, amateur, college, and all notable games played in 1868 and 1869, providing a contemporary glimpse into the early days of America s national game. Minor toning, old light dampstaining at the top edge of each volume, a very good set overall with three partly damaged and mended leaves in Vol. 19: pp. 3-4 has some loss at the fore-edge margin and minor shaving to the letterpress; pp. 169-70 and 181-82 each have a six-inch mended horizontal tear (legible across the tear); pp. 181-82 also has a small rectangular piece (1 ½" x 4") excised from the fore-edge; two or three other leaves have a small rectangular piece of letterpress neatly excised at the bottom corner or fore-edge. (There are no references to baseball on those pages). A detailed list of 36 issues featuring a weekly column reporting on baseball is available.
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