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“Where Would We Be?”
Albert Spalding is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. He played professional baseball in the 1870s for several teams, including the Boston Red Stockings and the Chicago White Stockings. He is also a member of the Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame, an honor recognizing the many influential roles he held throughout the sporting world.
While playing professionally for the Chicago White Stockings in 1876, Albert and his younger brother Walter began a sporting goods company in Chicago. The business flourished in part because of Albert’s fame and standing in the sports world, but Walter managed the day-to-day operation. By 1901, the company had grown to fourteen stores.
One hundred fifty years ago this week, the Spalding brothers launched what would become Spalding Sporting Goods, a company that eventually produced the first official baseball, football, basketball, tennis ball, and golf ball.
My life, and likely yours as well, has been shaped in quiet ways by these two brothers. They introduced bicycles, baseball gloves, volleyballs, sports shoes, and countless other items that helped form the childhoods of generations over the last century and a half.
Remarkably, the two people had a lasting impact on the world. Yet history barely remembers the younger brother, Walter. Try searching for Walter Spalding, and you will find very little. Nearly all the attention remains fixed on Albert.
Why is that? Why does history remember only one brother when it took both of them to build Spalding Sporting Goods? Was there a scandal? Was Walter merely riding his brother’s coattails? Or is it simply that Albert’s fame overshadowed the quieter faithfulness of a man who, along with his wife, founded and funded many philanthropic efforts in this country and around the world, such as the orchestra of Florence, Italy?
I love an underdog story, and for me, this is one. No one questions Albert’s achievements, but it took two brothers to put a football into my hands. We often say that history never forgets, but I am not sure that is true. History remembers what it finds exciting. If someone is not flashy, controversial, or larger than life, history often moves on to someone else.
This is not new. We long to be noticed, remembered, and included. Faith, however, points us in a different direction. We are not called to serve so that we become rich, famous, or interesting. We are called to serve so that we may love one another, just as the Lord has loved us.
Jesus says it plainly, “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave, just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:26b - 28, NRSV)
Maybe the better question is not why history forgot Walter Spalding. Maybe the better question is, where would we be without people like him?
Blessings, Brock
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