The 2014 baseball season opens this weekend when the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Arizona Diamondbacks play two regular-season games in Sydney, Australia, more than a week before the rest of the teams officially hit the field. Certainly Major League Baseball hopes to illustrate the global popularity of American baseball â?? but itâ??s been done bigger and better before. A century ago, an international tour yet to be equaled featured the New York Giants, Chicago White Sox, and Jim Thorpe, the man considered the greatest athlete on the planet who was simply glad to have a job.
The instigators of the around-the-world series of games were John â??Mugsyâ? McGraw of the Giants, the most successful manager in baseball, and Charles Comiskey, owner of the White Sox. One night in December 1913, McGraw and Comiskey were having drinks at â??Smileyâ? Mike Corbettâ??s bar on Chicagoâ??s East Side, and the idea of a world tour came up. McGraw knew something about the business â?? he was in the midst of a 16-week tour of vaudeville theaters, where all he had to do was tell baseball yarns for a whopping $3,000 a week. Comiskey was already rich and McGraw was getting there, so making money was not the main motive for a journey around the globe. Both men were envious of the fame that Albert Spalding, seeking to spread the reach of his sporting goods company, had achieved when he had led players on an 1889-90 tour of several countries including New Zealand, Australia, Egypt and Italy. McGraw and Comiskey wanted to lead a bigger and better tour with teams representing the two biggest cities in the United States. The 25th anniversary of Spaldingâ??s adventure was approaching, so the time was right for a new edition.
The tour that McGraw and Comiskey envisioned would begin as a barnstorming trek across the country right after the 1913 World Series. Upon reaching the West Coast, the two teams and whoever else was allowed to tag along (especially reporters) would board a ship to take them across the Pacific. The tourâ??s first stop on foreign soil would be in Tokyo and, going from east to west, the last one would be in London. In between the travelers would touch down in China, the Philippines, Egypt, Ceylon, France, and other countries with at least a rudimentary ballfield.
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