Spalding's World Tour: The Epic Adventure That Took Baseball Around the Globe - And Made It America's Game : PublicAffairs : 9781586484330 : 1586484338 : 05 Jun 2007 : In October of 1888, Albert Goodwill Spalding -- baseball star, sporting-goods magnate, promotional genius, serial fabulist -- departed Chicago on a trip that would take him and two baseball teams on a journey clear around the globe. Their mission, closely followed in the American and international press, had two (secret) goals: to fix the game in the American consciousness as the purest expression of the national spirit, and to seed markets for Spalding's products near and far. In the process, these first cultural ambassadors played before kings and queens, visited the Coliseum and the Eiffel Tower, and took pot shots with their baseballs at the great Sphinx in Egypt. This expedition to lands both exotic and familiar is chronicled with dash and wit in Mark Lamster's Spalding's World Tour, a book filled with larger-than-l