The train departed our nation’s capital, bound west for the sea. On board were the organizer of the tour, Albert Spalding, his wife, twenty baseball players, a manager and his two assistants, a cricket coach, a few of the players and coaches’ wives, a one-eyed daredevil balloonist named Professor Bartholomew, and a dancer named Clarence Duval.
Together, they would bring their message to the world’s farthest corners: Oceania. The South Pacific. New Zealand. Not as explorers, but missionaries, spreading the Book of Baseball.
The journey, which set off in October 1888, was designed to be a financial disaster, and succeeded.