Spalding's base ball guide, and official league book for ... : a complete hand book of the national game of base ball ..
Spalding's base ball guide is a yearly baseball handbook published in Chicago and New York by A.G. Spalding & Bros. in 1877, aimed at players, clubs and fans of the national game. The first picture is a sideways page of three oval-framed portraits of men captioned as the Three Presidents, set in a rustic lettered frame, and the second is a formal oval head-and-shoulders portrait of a Chicago ball player with a caption naming his club. Together they show how nineteenth-century print handled sporting celebrity: tightly cropped studio portraits, oval vignettes, and ornamental script captions a designer could borrow for vintage sports graphics.
