From the O'Connor Collection, the Base Ball Players Pocket Companion is also the companion publication to the Putnam and National Association booklets that so distiguish this priceless collection. About the same size as the other two, its importance is that it was baseball's first written history, a forerunner of the Spalding, Reach and Beadle "bibles" that came later. It also dealt with what was a war going on at the time between two different styles of baseball, each vying for supremacy as the game began to take hold across the land, between the "New York Game " and "Massachusetts Game". The book compared the rules of each as well as listing officers of the opposing National Association and soon to be defunct New England Association. This is a third revised edition printed by Mayhew & Baker of Boston. Only slight damage, with a crease on the lower right corner of the brown cover. Inside front cover is fountain pen-inscribed "Property of R.F. Kinsella, Springfield, Illinois", as is the case with the other two books.