Between the years 1888 and 1889, in an attempt to grow the game, an organized collection of American baseball players traveled the world.
Although the effort failed, a memento of the trip included a surreal photo of ballplayers, in full uniform, posing on and around the Great Sphinx in Giza, Egypt.
That photo is one of the countless artifacts owned by the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
It is also part of a book recently written by one of the last of the old-school sports writers, Bert Sugar.
Sugar, now in his 70s and maybe best known for his coverage of professional boxing, has been aptly described as Runyonesque. It is easy to picture Sugar, wearing his fedora and chopping on an ever-present cigar, sitting around a table in a smoke-filled Broadway bar reliving the exploits of Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio and, his favorite, Mickey Vernon.
It's all in Bert Sugar's Hall of Fame: A Living History of America's Greatest Game .
The title pretty much sums up Sugar's feelings on the sport.
"I love it," Sugar said of his latest work, a coffee-table offering complete with photos by Bruce Curtis. "[Running Press] made chicken salad out of my chicken droppings."
Born in 1936 and raised in Washington D.C., Sugar became a fan of the hapless Washington Senators -- "First in war, first in peace and last in the American League."
The Nationals have kept up the tradition established by the Senators. Now, they're last in the National League.
"Our double-play combination," said the gravelly-voiced Sugar of his Senators, "was short to second to the right-field bleachers."
The Hall project, which meant countless journeys to the village of Cooperstown, N.Y., a place that breathes the word bucolic, was the culmination of a lifelong dream. The book is as much about the history of baseball as it is the hall.
"Baseball has always been my favorite sport," said Sugar, former editor of Boxing Illustrated and The Ring magazines. "I wanted pictures of exhibits, but I also wanted to tell a history of the exhibit; something to reflect the artifact. To me, baseball was fun."
Sugar credits those in charge of the ivy-covered hall for being open and willing to participate in his project.
"I had to keep going back because, A, I wanted to make sure I got it right, and, B, they kept moving the exhibits."
For example, he discovered that the larger-than-life statues of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams that greeted visitors in the hall lobby were replaced by sculptures of Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente.
The book is divided into three sections, or floors of the hall, including the Plaque Gallery. Like the Hall of Fame itself, it is not necessary to actually start at the beginning.
Open and book anywhere and begin.
"The fun is to know what's on the inside," he said. "That was story I wanted to tell."
Bert Sugar's Hall of Fame is a tale well told.
