In the mail recently: Spalding's World Tour: The Epic Adventure that Took Baseball Around the Globe - And Made It America's Game, by Mark Lamster, about the world tour led by Al Spalding in the winter of 1888-89, featuring Cap Anson's Cubs (then known as the White Stockings) facing off against an "all-star" team led by John Montgomery Ward in venues around the globe. I'm only a little more than a chapter in, but I'd definitely recommend it - it's well-written and obviously diligently researched, and covers a fascinating period in the game's history, the point in the late 1880s when baseball was just settling into the rules and structures that have governed the game ever since. Growing up we had a baseball history book that featured a short writeup on the tour, complete with the famous picture of the ballplayers posing around the Sphinx, but I'd never read an account of the tour for grownups. Already making cameo appearances in the parts I've read so far: Grover Cleveland, Mark Twain, Henry Chadwick, King Kelly, JG Taylor Spink, and Teddy Roosevelt. It's a fun read.