The director-general of the first World's Fair in 1886, Alfred Goshorn was the first president of the Cincinnati Base Ball Club 20 years earlier. He signed this copy of the Official Catalog of the United States International Exhibition when he was running the show at that first fair in America, and his signature grades 8/9 out of 10. Under Goshorn's watch, the Red Stockings would rise to the pinnacle as parent of the first professional baseball team: the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings. Goshorn served until that April, just before the opening of the famous season, presiding over three years of evolution from strictly amateur local membership and noncommercial play, ending in full professionalism.