page_title: Spalding (company)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Spalding (company) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: This foundry mark is on the base of the Civil War Memorial, Capron Park, Attleboro, Massachusetts. "Spalding Foundries, successor to Ames Foundries. Chicopee, Mass". 1908
context_page_description: Spalding is an American sports equipment manufacturing company founded by Albert Spalding in Chicago, Illinois, in 1876. It is now headquartered in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Spalding currently focuses on basketball, mainly producing balls but also commercialising hoops, rims, nets and ball pump needles. Softballs are commercialised through its subsidiary Dudley Sports.
  In the past, Spalding manufactured balls for other sports, such as American football, baseball, soccer, and volleyball.
context_section_description: The company was founded in 1876 when Albert Spalding was a pitcher and manager of a baseball team in Chicago, the Chicago White Stockings. The company standardized early baseballs and developed the modern baseball bat with the bulge at its apex. In 1892, Spalding acquired Wright & Ditson and A. J. Reach, both rival sporting goods companies.
  In 1893, A.G. Spalding & Brothers purchased the Lamb Knitting Machine Company located in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts and renamed it the Lamb Manufacturing Company. It used this purchase to consolidate its skate manufactory from Newark and its gymnasium goods manufactory from Philadelphia to the Chicopee plant. Lamb, primarily engaged in manufacturing knitting machines, rifles, and egg-beaters, had been fulfilling a contract since 1890 to produce the Credenda bicycle wheel for Spalding. Spalding chose Chicopee because it was the home of the Overman Wheel Company, Spalding acted as their distributor in the Western USA, and Overman contracted with Lamb to make wheels for its lower-end products.
  The Spalding "League Ball" was adopted by the National League and American Association of Professional Base Ball Clubs for the seasons of 1892–1896 and used by the National League since 1880. It was manufactured by A. G. Spalding & Bros., Chicago, New York & Philadelphia and sold for $1.50 in 1896.
  Production of bicycles continued at the Chicopee plant through the latter part of the 19th century, but in 1899 A.G. Ben Spalding sold its bicycle division to a massive trust called the American Bicycle Company which controlled 65% of the bicycle business in the US.
  During World War II, the company joined five other firms to form the New England Small Arms Corporation for manufacture of M1918 Browning Automatic Rifles.
  Spalding produced the well-known "Spaldeen" high-bounce rubber ball, said to be a re-use of defective tennis ball cores, that was sold to city children from 1949. In baseball, Spalding manufactured the official ball of the major leagues through the 1976 season, using the Reach brand on American League balls and the Spalding trademark on National League balls. Since 1977 the official ball has been made by Rawlings.
  Spalding became a division of the Russell Corporation in 2003.  However, that deal did not encompass Spalding's golf operations, which included the Top-Flite, Ben Hogan and Strata brands, which were eventually bought by Callaway later the same year.
  Horween Leather Company supplies leather to Spalding for indoor Arena Football League footballs.
caption: Foundry mark on the base of the Civil War Memorial, Capron Park, Attleboro, Massachusetts. Leyend says: "Spalding Foundries, successor to Ames Foundries. Chicopee, Mass"
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