Spalding World Tour

The Spalding World Tour was an exhibition baseball tournament that circumnavigated the globe from in October 1888 to April 1889.[1][2][3] Financed by former player and sporting goods executive Albert Spalding, the tour – composed of Spalding's own Chicago White Stockings and a team of "All-Americans" – travelled to Australia, Egypt, Italy, France, England, Ireland and the United States.[4]

The purpose of the world tour was to promote the sport of Baseball nationally across the United States and globally.[5] At the time, sportswriter Henry Chadwick called it "the greatest event in the modern history of athletic sports."[6]

  1. ^ "Spalding's Austrian Baseball Tour". AMERICAN HERITAGE.
  2. ^ "Spalding's World Tour". The New Yorker.
  3. ^ "Spalding's World Tour". www.wbur.org.
  4. ^ "Flashback: Baseball at the feet of the Sphinx? A 1888-89 world tour sent the Chicago White Stockings on a really long road trip". Chicago Tribune.
  5. ^ "When Baseball Went Global: 'Spalding's World Tour'". NPR.org.
  6. ^ "Business, Missionary Motives Behind 1888-89 World Tour". Society of American Baseball Research.