"Baseball gives a growing boy self poise and self reliance."

"Baseball is a man maker."

"Baseball is the exponent of American Courage, Confidence, Combativeness, American Dash, Discipline, Determination, American Energy, Eagerness, Enthusiasm, American Pluck, Persistency, Performance, American Spirit, Sagacity, Success, American Vim, Vigor, Virility."

"I was not able to understand how it could be right to pay an actor, or a singer, or an instrumentalist for entertaining the public and wrong to pay a ball player for doing exactly the same thing."

"No human mind may measure the blessings conferred by the game of base ball on the soldiers of the Civil War. It had its earliest evolution when soldiers, North and South, were striving to forget their foes by cultivating, through this grand game, fraternal friendships with comrades in arms."

"Professional baseball is on the wane. Salaries must come down or the interest of the public must be increased in some way."

"The genius of our institutions is democratic - Base Ball is a democratic game."

"Two hours is about as long as any American can wait for the close of a baseball game, or anything else for that matter."

"His (Al Spalding) face is that of a Greek hero, his manner that of a Church of England Bishop, and he is the father of the greatest sport the world has ever known." - New York Times (1899)

"Next to Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, the name A.G. Spalding is the most famous in American literature." - Boston Herald Editorial (1880)