By Nick Etter
The tour of the Archives and Collection Department was interesting to say the least. Head Librarian Bill Gates was able to pull five different artifacts from the Archives to display for us. The first of the artifacts was a small handbook, called the bylaws, from one of the original baseball clubs. Mr. Gates informed us that each baseball club had its own set of rules, and when a game was declared, a rule committee had to decide on 
a set of rules. Originating from the “baseball club” thought, he went on to explain that each club welcomed all players because each player had to pay dues to play. As more players joined, the whole set of members would not be able to play in a single game. This led to the development of the “Muffin” team. The Muffins would play a second game, after the starters, to allow all paying members playing time. The term “muffing” a ground-ball, or “muffed it” comes from baseball’s muffin team.
The second artifact was an original check from the New York Yankees to the Boston Red Sox for the transaction of Babe Ruth. The check is one of four payments that the Yankees made to the Red Sox. Only two of the four checks are remaining today.
We also were privileged to see the 1947 National League, hand-kept stat book. The 6-inch-thick ledger held all he hand tallied statistics from every National League team in 1947. He also told us that if any statistic had been miscalculated, every change had to be tallied up, and reassigned to the rightful stat-holder. The example he explained was for every RBI that didn’t count for one person, in order to add it back to him, it had to be taken away from someone else. Mr. Gates also pulled the hand drawn spray charts from Craig Biggio, 2015 Hall of Fame inductee. Before the computer age, hand draw, color coded spray charts for each player were documented by managers after each game.
