pwce (0 r ^^ _<&' JShraxS '•^^^Hp ^j Hi *»*' Jw GV 877 S734 ;lra Tn iVW PUBLISHERS' NOTICE}. Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide again ets the base ball public with the official records of merica's national game. Since it was first issued in 877, it has grown in popularity, size and importance om year to year, until now it is the recognized thority upon all base ball matters. The statistics ntained in the "Guide" can be relied upon, nearly 11 of them having been compiled from official records. The "Guide" has attained such a size — 180 pages as to preclude the possibility of publishing in the same issue the League Constitution in full, and other interesting League matter. We are therefore com- pelled, in addition, to publish the " Official League Book," which contains only official League matter as burnished by Secretary Young, including the League Constitution in full. Copies of the "Guide" or "League Book," will be mailed to any address upon receipt of twelve cents each. Trade orders supplied through the News Companies, or direct from the publishers. CH.CAOO. A. 6. SPALDING & BROS, nbwvopk. PHILADELPHIA. Washington, D. C, March 5, 1S90. By the authority vested in me, I do hereby certify that Messrs. A. G. Spalding & Bros., of Chicago and New York, have been granted the exclusive right to publish the Official League Book for 1890. N. E. YOUNG, Secretary Xational League of Professional Base Ball Clubs. SPALDING'S Base Ball Guide AND Official League Book for 1890. A COMPLETE HAND BOOK OF THE NATIONAL* GAME OF BASE BALL. CONTAINING STATISTICAL REVIEWS OF THE VARIOUS PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION CHAMPIONSHIP SEASONS, AS ALSO THE RECORDS AND AVERAGES OF THE INTER-COLEG1ATE ASSOCIA- TIONS, EAST and WEST. ADDED TO WHICH IS THE COMPLETE OFFICIAL LEAGUE RECORD FOR 1889. A Brief Record of the Base Ball Tours to England in 1874, and to Australia in 1888. TOGETHER WITH THE NEW CODE OF PLAYING RULES AS REVISED BY THE COMMITTEE OF CONFERENCE. Attached to which are Explanatory Notes' Giving a Correct Interpretation of the New Rules, also the Official Record of all League Games and Players, and the Official Schedule of League Games for 1890, Pitchers' Records in Victories for 18S9. Base Running and Throwing Records of 1SS9 with the Leading Note- worthy Events. Records of the Veteran Batsmen of the League from 1S76 to 18S9. Handsomely Illustrated with Portraits. e dited by henry chadwick. PUBLISHED BY A. G. SPALDING & BROS. CHICAGO AND NEW YORK. Entered according to Act of Congrese, In the year 1390, by A. G. Spalding & Bros., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. — ^rj21^ O F A BALL GROUND. CORRF LfigA]yL Centre Left* Bight 2d Baseman /• 1st Baseman T L CO p TCH ER l4£t. S a > /^fl E "1 s 7vn 1 « 1 V / s f[ /CATCHER <?/ UMPIRE A \ Catcher's fence Batsman and Catcher. A. A. A.-Ground reserved for Umpire, B.-Ground reserved for Captain and Assistant. B. Bat Rack. C -Players' Bench. D. -Visiting Players E.—Home Players' Bat Rack. PREFACE. The publishers of Spalding's Base Ball Guide present to the fraternity in the Guide for 1890 the model base ball annual of the period; the Fourteenth annual edition of the work being in every respect the most complete Base Ball Guide ever issued. Exceeding as it does every other book of the kind in size—over two hundred pages of reading matter—it presents an epitome of Hie professional history of the game for 1889, unequaled by any other work of the kind published. In fact, the Guide for 1890 has been made to conform to the very exceptional year of important events its chapters record—a year which will be remembered for a long time to come as fruitful of the most noteworthy occur- rences known in the annals of our national game. The Guide for 1890 contains a new feature in the extension of the editorial chapters on the. prominent events, incidents, and occurrences of the exceptional base ball year of 1889 with its great strike of the League players, and the temporary demoralization in the ranks of both the American Association and the National League which it led to. The prominent features of the Guide for 1890 are the complete records of the pitching in the League and American championship contests, as also in the leading Minor Leagues; the instructive chapters on "the lessons of the campaign," on "team work;" on "Umpiring" on the "revolt, "etc., etc., and the analysis of the play in the world's championship series of contests; the new tables showing the figures of the campaigns of the past eighteen years; and especially the explanatory notes in the rules giving in- structions to umpires and captains. The great size oi the Guide precludes the possibility of includ- ing the games record of the League campaign, as also other records of League legislation, etc., and these will be found in the "Official League Book," which contains only official League matter as furnished by Secretary Young, including the League Constitution in full. 5 INTRODUCTION. The remarkable developments of the professional base ball senson of 1889, and the many novel and interesting events which characterized the past year's history of the base ball world, call for largely increased space in the Guide for editorial comment on the leading base ball occurrences of the past year; and on this <faccount the Guide for 1890 will contain the largest number of pages of any Guide yet issued. These editorial articles reviewing the season's work on the diamond fields are not only interesting but instructive, for they are simply the conning over of the lessons of the campaign, and the deductions from the experiments of the past year. Another new feature of the Guide for 1890 is the substitution of editorial notes — officially indorsed by President Young— at the end of each important rule of the game giving the authoritative interpretation of every rule on which there may be a doubt as to its true meaning. Attention is called, too, to the exhaustive analysis of the League and Association pitching of 1889, as also the new arrangement of the averages, by means of which prominence is given to the figures of those players who take part in the largest number of games each season The special attention given to the club sta- tistics of the League and Association championship teams, too, is an additional, attraction to the Guide of 1890. In fact, this four- teenth Annual edition of the National League's Guide is the World's Base Ball Manual, and has no equal. As a sequel to the Guide we shall issue early in April, Spald- ing's Amateur's Guide for 1890, giving special instructions for beginners in learning the game, and designed expressly to meet Ihe wants of the junior class of the fraternity. A. G. Spalding & Bros. Chicago, Neiv York, Philadelphia, London. BASE BALL GUIDE. 7 THE AMERICAN NATIONAL GAME. ITS HISTORY BY DECADES. The year 1890 begins the fifth decade in the history of our American national field game of base ball, and it gives ever)' prom- ise of being the most interesting period in the annals of the game. The first chapter may be said to have been opened in 1850, at which time the game was in its infancy, a few organized base ball clubs existing at that period in and around New York, while vary- ing phases of the game were played in Boston and Philadelphia^ But in 1857 the clubs of New York, Brooklyn and vicinity pooled their interests and established the first National Association of Base Ball Players, and from this most important base ball event of the decade of the fifties may be dated the birth of our nationaL game. As to the origin of base ball, it is virtually quite imma- terial whether it sprang from the old English school boy game of Rounders or not ; though the fact that the phase of base ball played by the Olympic Club of Philadelphia as early as 1833 and known as "town ball," as well as the Massachusetts game of base ball played in the New England States at a far later period, had for their rules a feature of the game of Rounders—viz., the four posts as bases, exclusive of the base where the batsman its stood—would go to sustain the claim of English origin ; as also the additional fact that up to the period of the fifties the base ball game in vogue in New York had for one of its rules that of the game of Rounders which put out base runners by hitting them with the thrown ball, there being no base players proper in the game at that time. Be that as it may, all the phases of Rounders which marked the game of base ball of forty years ago, disappeared under the revised code of playing rules adopted by the National. Association in 1857, and tnen it was that the evolution of our American game began, and now no one of common sense questions for a moment the fact that the base ball of the existing period is as distinct from the English school boy game of Rounders, as the royal game of chess is from the nursery game of "Tit, Tat, To." The second chapter of our game's history covers the record of the principal base ball events of the decade of the sixties, and it opened with the interesting event of the missionary tour through the State of New York, and afterward through Pennsylvania and Maryland, made by the old Excelsior Club of Brooklyn in i860.