The Gilt Edge of Ambition: A Sportsman's Gamble for Power and Baseball

A gripping story of ambition, vice, and the birth of professional baseball in California.In the closing years of the nineteenth century, Sacramento was a city of gaslight and grit—its streets lined with gambling halls, saloons, and the restless energy of a place still inventing itself. At the center of it stood Ed Kripp: gambler, promoter, and architect of one of California’s earliest baseball dynasties.The Gilt Edge of Ambition follows Kripp’s rise as he led his club to an unprecedented run of pennants and built Buffalo Park; navigating a world where deals were struck in back rooms and fortunes turned overnight. Baseball, in this moment, was not yet a settled institution—it was spectacle, business, and risk, all at once.As the twentieth century approached and the glow of gas lamps gave way to a more ordered age, the game—and the city—began to change. Informal power gave way to structure, and the chaotic world that had made Kripp possible slowly receded.Drawing on extensive archival research, Lisa Jonsson brings to life a forgotten era when ambition was raw, the rules were unwritten, and modern California was just beginning to take shape.Based on more than five hundred primary sources, this narrative brings a lost chapter of California history vividly to life. Read more