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WILL CHICAGO BECOME NEW CENTER OF BASEBALL?
LOCAL BUSINESSMAN PLAYS HUNCH, OPENS LARGE BASEBALL GOODS STORE IN 5TH-LARGEST CITY

CHICAGO, ILL. (Feb. 12, 1876) - The two largest cities outside of the Northeastern United States are St. Louis & Chicago. It is in the latter of the two cities that a businessman has become of the belief that the sport of baseball as an everyday pastime is soon to sweep across the country, and in response has opened a multi-floor baseball goods emporium.

Illinois native Albert Spalding, along with his brother Walter, has opened a largest-of-its-kind store in the Andrews Building on Madison Street in Chicago, where the ball player can get everything for the sport he could ever want: bats, balls, hats, shirts, pants, socks, shoes, and accessories like score cards and rule books.

(In real life, in addition to being the founder of Spalding, Albert Spalding was a pitcher who almost certainly would have made the Hall of Fame based solely on statistical output had he not retired at age 26, he helped organize the National League in 1876, helped put together the first scholarly – albeit flawed – account of the history of baseball, he took a group of baseball players on a world tour, and the company he founded sold books about various sports. Due to his off-the-field work, Spalding was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939 as part of the fourth class of inductees.)

While the Midwestern United States doesn’t have anywhere close to the population of the Northeast – it only has seven of the U.S.A.’s thirty largest cities – it has become home to a quickly spreading network of baseball clubs, some of which have become well-known:

• Chicago, Ill.: Lake Michigan
• Chicago, Ill.: Red & Gold
• Cincinnati, Ohio: Queen City
• Cleveland, Ohio: Forest City
• Detroit, Mich.: Detroit B.B.C.
• Indianapolis, Ind.: Indianapolis B.B.C.
• Louisville, Ky.: River City
• Milwaukee, Wis.: Bavarian B.B.C.
• St. Louis, Mo.: Bluebird B.B.C.
• St. Louis, Mo.: Louis IX B.B.C.

While the above is a list of ten clubs in major Midwestern cities known to some in traditional baseball circles, in recent years many clubs have sprung up in smaller cities and towns as leisure time has become a more common thing to have among American workers, and things to do with that leisure time are thus more in demand.

Some say that it’s only a matter of time before Midwestern baseball has an organizational structure in place to rival that of the sport’s home in the Northeast. If that is true, then Spalding may have positioned himself well to become one of the premier suppliers to everyone involved with the game in due time.