Abner Graves

NEW PODCAST! The History of Sport Episode 2: Baseball & the Little Pretty Pocket Book

One more episode from my new/other podcast before getting back to medieval travel. You can find more on Apple Podcasts and all the other usual platforms.

Today's episode is about a piece of baseball history, very early baseball history. It's about an 18th-century children's book, about a nationalistic effort to claim ownership over baseball, and about a mining engineer's nostalgic memories of the game's early days. It's about Albert Spalding, the Spalding of so much sports equipment, Abner Graves, the mining engineer in question, and the Civil War general, Abner Doubleday. It's about John Newbery, the man for whom the Newbery Medal for American children's literature is named.