Chadwick's American Cricket Manual. Containing the Revised Laws of the Game... Also, a Manual of La Crosse, The National Game of Canada.. by CHADWICK, Henry - 1873

New York: Robert M. De Witt, 1873. Hardcover. Very Good. First edition. Small octavo. 128, [4]pp., with wood-engraved illustrations and diagrams throughout the text, and four pages of advertisements at the back. Publisher's purple cloth stamped in gold on front cover and spine, and in blind on back cover. Spine is toned, head and tail of spine are worn down to the text block, a few small chips at the edges of boards and corners, about very good. Housed in a maroon cloth chemise and quarter leather slipcase with gilt decorated spine and raised bands. Alfred H. Wright's copy with his ownership Signature in pencil on the front fly leaf, and his penciled emendations throughout the text, including at least two notes (pp. 58-59) written in reference to William Henry "Harry" Wright, who assembled, managed, and played center field for baseball's first fully professional team, the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings. This copy was originally purchased with a lot of books from Henry Chadwick's library, many of which were annotated by Chadwick, and it appears likely that some of the annotations in this copy might also be in his hand.

Alfred H. Wright, the son of a publisher and bookseller, was a pioneering veteran of early baseball, both as a prominent player (he reportedly was one of the first to introduce baseball to Philadelphia in the early 1850s), and later as an influential sports journalist and baseball team manager. In 1858 he moved to New York and played for 10 seasons with the leading baseball clubs in the city, as well as with the Manhattan Cricket Club. His fascination with data and statistics insured that he had an influence in the refinement of the rules and the record-keeping of the sport. He was also reputed to have the largest collection of cricket books in the United States.

As noted by Richard Hershberger in "How Bases on Balls were Scored: 1864-1888" (published in the Spring 2018 issue of *Baseball Research Journal*): "Wright was the baseball [and cricket] editor for the Philadelphia *Sunday Mercury* in the late 1860s and '70s, as well as the official scorer of the Athletic Club of Philadelphia. He also was said to have a remarkable memory for records, able to "give scores and dates of games played between first-class clubs since the game has become popular," making him baseball's earliest known trivia maven ... He kept the most detailed record of any club scorer, was forward thinking in what records should be kept and how they should be analyzed, and used his newspaper position to put his ideas into practical form. Close examination of the *Sunday Mercury's* annual compilation of the club's records in the late 1860s and early '70s shows innovations that would later become standard."

In itself not an overly rare book, the corrections and annotations featured in this copy may prove to be an important primary source and corrective to the established knowledge of the early history of cricket.