In October 1888, Albert Goodwill Spalding -- baseball star, sporting goods magnate, promotional genius, serial fabulist -- departed Chicago on a trip that would take him and 20 of the game's greatest players on a journey around the globe. Their mission: to bring baseball, and with it the American way, to the four corners of the earth. Spalding hoped this international adventure would fix the game of baseball in the American consciousness as the purest expression of the national spirit, and at the same time seed the world's markets for his nascent sporting goods empire. To boost interest, he brought along an ill-fated "aerialist" who would leap from a hot-air balloon before each game; a young African-American minstrel; and stars such as New York Giants shortstop John Ward. In the course of their 30,000 mile journey, Spalding and this motley group of cultural ambassadors played before kings and queens, visited the Coliseum and the Eiffel Tower, and took pot shots with their baseballs at the great Sphinx in Egypt. Upon their triumphant return, they were greeted as heroes by the likes of Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, and Benjamin Harrison. Getting themselves into scrapes and narrowly escaping international incident all around the globe, these innocents abroad gave the world an early peek at the American century just around the corner. - Jacket flap.
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