Excerpt from Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide, 1903 Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide for 1903 is the twen ty-seventh yearly volume of its publication, and for twenty one years of this period, the veteran writer, Mr. Henry Chadwick, has been its editor, and his work on the Guide has been a noteworthy feature of his half-century career as a journalist and a writer on his specialty of sports and pastimes. For reference purposes a new department of this year's Guide will contain a complete record of pennant races, not only of the old Professional National Association of the early 7o's, but also of the National League from 1876 to 1902, inclusive. But one of the most readable features of the Guide of 1903 will be the introductory chapters giving a history of base ball from the time of the earliest known records of the game up to the present period; and one of these chapters is devoted to a brief history of the rise and progress of professional base ball. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.