The National Game by A. H. Spink.  Copyright 1910, published by National Game Publishing Co., St. Louis.  First Edition.  With postcard of 1911 New York Giants team pasted on inside page.

This book, which contains 355 pages, presents a complete history of baseball from the time it was first played until the time this book was written in 1910.  It contains 133 pictures of teams and individual players, and biographies of all the players of the day, the great as well as the lesser knowns, and many former players.  The book, which was written by Alfred H. Spink, the founder of the Sporting News, is considered by many to be the finest and most substantial of early historical baseball books, and would be a wonderful additional to any baseball library or collection.

The postcard, which is pasted on the second blank page, features head shots of the manager John McGraw and 21 players including Christy Mathewson and Rube Marquand.  The postcard looks trimmed and is in Excellent condition.

The book is a very good, clean copy of this important first baseball history.  The cover has a fine gilt-decorated scene of two ballplayers tossing a ball across a diamond.  The corners and the spine ends are frayed a bit.  Cloth is a little rubbed and slightly soiled.  Interior pages are, however, in excellent condition, and binding is tight.  There is slight darkening of the first couple of pages from newspaper clippings having been laid in.

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