Signed book: America's National Game. First edition. NY: American Sports Publishing Company, 1911. Hardcover bound in bright blue cloth boards with decorative gilt lettering and Uncle Sam with bat design, 6.25 x 8.25, 542 pages. Signed and inscribed on the first free end page in bold fountain pen, "To J. F. Gray, with my compliments, A. G. Spalding, New York, Oct. 26, 1911." Affixed to the half-title page is a Civil War-era ink signature of Abner Doubleday, "A. Doubleday, Major General," penned on an off-white 4.75 x 2.5 sheet dated October 27, 1864. Autographic condition: fine, with a clipped upper right corner to the Spalding page, and light wrinkling to the Doubleday slip. Book condition: VG/None, with cracked hinges and minor rubbing to extremities. Accompanied by a custom quarter-leather slipcase. A sensationally scarce first edition signed by the elusive Spalding, one of the sport's foremost pioneers, and Doubleday, a Union Major General who, for a brief time, was thought to be the inventor of baseball. Only the sixth Spalding signature that we have ever offered.
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