RARE 1872 EDITION OF “THE FIRST BASEBALL GUIDE PUBLISHED FOR COMMERCIAL SALE”

(BASEBALL) CHADWICK, Henry, ed. The Dime Base Ball Player, Comprising the Proceedings of the March Conventions of 1872… New York: Beadle and Company, (1872). 12mo, original pictorial orange wrappers. $1850.

Rare 1872 edition of Beadle’s Dime Base Ball Player, with professional club records and statistics for the year 1871, baseball history, instruction and the “new rules adopted.”

The Beadle baseball guide was first published in 1860 and was “the first baseball guide published for commercial sale to the public” (Smith 172). Editor Henry Chadwick, “widely known as the ‘Father of Baseball” (DAB), chaired the National Association of Base Ball Players and is credited with devising the box score, among other innovations. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of fame in 1938. With a diagram of a baseball field at front and advertisements at rear. Nice, complete 19th-century baseball guides are scarce, Henry Chadwick’s Beadle Guides (published 1860-1881) are exceptionally so.

Interior generally quite clean, with only a little light dampstaining at some edges. Japanese paper repair along spine, with some minor wear at edges of fragile original wrappers. An exceptionally good copy of this rare and desirable early piece of baseball history.