Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

A J Reach
Philadelphia

Alfred J Reach (1840 - 1928) was born in London but moved to Brooklyn aged one. In his teens he worked in an iron foundry but the son of a cricketer had a talent for baseball and was tempted from a local Brooklyn team to the Philadelphia Athletics in 1865 where the 2nd baseman became the first openly professional baseball player in the country.

While his baseball playing days were coming to an end he opened a cigar store and, after that, a sporting goods outlet and later a manufacturing facility for that store. When the National Baseball League decided it had better be represented in Philadelphia, it turned to A J Reach who moved the Worcester, Massachusetts, franchise to the city to become the Phillies. He spent twenty years as owner and president.

The Reach company continued to flourish, moving to larger premises in Chestnut Street and opening a new plant in Brantford, Ontario. The baseball the company produced became the official ball of the American League. Most of their golfing goods, the Eagle series and the low-cost Warwick line, were produced after Reach sold the company to Spalding in the early 1920s.

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