Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889

The season of 1888, in the professional arena, was marked by several events which placed it on record as the most noteworthy, known in the thirteen years' history of the National League. In the first place it was the inaugural year of the grand movement made by the President of the Chicago Club, to extend the popularity of our national game beyond the American continent; an event which exhibited the characteristic energy, pluck, liberality and business enterprise of Mr. Spalding, in a very marked manner; the grand success which the venture met with being a well merited reward for the large financial outlay which he incurred in the experiment. Secondly, the struggle for the championship of the League, resulting as it did in the success of the New York club, gave to the East a lead in the pennant races which they had not held since 1884, when the Providence club won the championship, Chicago having held the honors in 1885 and 1886, and Detroit in 1887. The past season, too, excelled all previous