Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide, 1915

First edition. Publisher's pale green pictorial wrappers, with yellow border, batter in white and red uniform to front wrapper, lettered in blue and red. Very good, with light toning to spine, previous owner's ink stamp to front wrapper, small closed tear to right edge of front wrapper, a small chip to top right corner of rear wrapper, and 2-inch closed tear to head of spine. Notably, the pages in this book are bound incorrectly, with a handful of pages missing. The page numbering is as follows: pp. 5 - 41, 187 - 233, 91 - 253. The missing pages, pp. 42 - 90, include the chapters "Stallings' Second Year's Task," "A First Championship," "Discovery of Curve Pitching," "Radbourne's Great Record," "George Edward Waddell," "Annual Meetings," "World Series of 1914," and part of "Sketches of World's Series Players of 1914." Overall, a tight and square copy. The 1914 baseball season finished with the Boston Braves sweeping the Philadelphia Athletics in four games to win the World Series. Notably, this guide features a photo of a very young Babe Ruth, on the 1914 minor league championship team, the Providence Grays (p. 196). Other important players photographed in the guide include Honus Wagner (p. 100) and Christy Mathewson (p. 106). Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide was an annually issued guide first published in 1878 by sporting goods magnate A. G. Spalding. During the 19th century, Spalding and Reach's guides included the rules and regulations for playing the game and were the primary source of sports statistics and analysis of the prior year. From 1881 to 1908, Spalding's Guide was edited by Henry Chadwick, often referred to as the "Father of Baseball." Chadwick made significant contributions to the rules of the game, created the modern baseball box score, and introduced a number of vocabulary words that are still used to today, like "strike out," "cut off," and "fungo." Chadwick passed away in 1908 and was succeeded as editor by longtime sportswriter John B. Foster. …