{"id":93,"date":"2026-05-20T14:37:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T14:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=93"},"modified":"2026-05-20T14:37:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T14:37:17","slug":"baseballs-magna-carta-finds-a-new-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=93","title":{"rendered":"Baseball\u2019s Magna Carta Finds a New Home"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Frank Murray was the C.E.O. of an air-conditioning concern, as well as a dabbler in map collecting, when, in 1999, a Sotheby\u2019s representative called and asked if he\u2019d like to bid on anything in its upcoming auction. Murray didn\u2019t have the catalogue at hand but vaguely recalled that he\u2019d been interested in item No. 323. \u201cThe baseball docs?\u201d the rep asked. This didn\u2019t ring a bell\u2014but then, Murray loved baseball. His relatives had been minority owners of the New York Giants, before the move to San Francisco. Sure, he said, put him down for a bid. Soon, his wallet was about twelve thousand dollars lighter, and Murray was in possession of what would come to be seen as baseball\u2019s Dead Sea Scrolls: handwritten revisions to the rules that first codified the sport as we more or less know it.<\/p>\n

Read more Where the Met Gala Really Begins<\/a><\/p>\n

Not that he had any inkling at the time. Murray showed the brittle papers, which seemed to enumerate the \u201cLaws of Base Ball,\u201d as recognized by New York\u2019s Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, to some antiquarians, who were unimpressed. \u201cYou got snookered,\u201d he was told. Murray\u2019s \u201cLaws\u201d were scrawled in 1857; the Knickerbocker was established in 1845. Into a drawer they went, and remained, until 2015. In a fit of spring cleaning, he finally noticed them again. A friend recommended that he consult John Thorn, Major League Baseball\u2019s official historian. \u201cOh, shit!\u201d Thorn said.<\/p>\n

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Murray was recounting all this the other day at the Round Hill Club, in Greenwich, as he prepared for a trip to Cooperstown, where the documents will go on public display later this week. He is no longer their owner\u2014he sold them in 2016, for more than three million dollars, a profit of some twenty-five thousand per cent\u2014but he retains a personal interest, verging on a crusade, in the cause of promoting their significance. He showed a slide to his guests with an image of the Hall of Fame plaque honoring Alexander Cartwright, a Knickerbocker founder, as the \u201cFather of Modern Base Ball\u201d and crediting Cartwright with establishing crucial standards that remain in place today: nine innings, nine fielders, ninety feet between bases. \u201cNone of that\u2019s true,\u201d Murray said.<\/p>\n

Mid-nineteenth-century baseball, he went on, was an amalgam of several games, among them cricket, rounders, and stoolball, an ancient pastime of British milkmaids. In Massachusetts, the batter stood between first base and home, and there were two catchers, one behind the other. The Knickerbockers, using Hoboken\u2019s Elysian Fields, typically played games to twenty-one, innings be damned. The bats varied in shape. They pitched underhand. \u201cIt was basically \u2018Don\u2019t be late,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Murray said of the rules, such as they were. \u201c\u00a0\u2018We\u2019ll pick captains and they\u2019ll divide up the people. If you don\u2019t have enough, you can just pull people from the audience.\u2019 It wasn\u2019t a team. It was a club. And that was Alexander Cartwright: he was a club guy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Some latter-day club guys went on munching Cracker Jacks and sipping I.P.A.s, unoffended, as Murray explained that Cartwright moved to California in 1849, chasing gold. \u201cAnd then he failed out there and decided to move to Hawaii,\u201d Murray said. \u201cHe had nothing to do with the modern rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

A man seated by the bar raised his hand. \u201cSo does Cartwright\u2019s plaque get an asterisk\u2014like Alex Rodriguez, who should be in the Hall of Fame?\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more P\u00e9ter Magyar Led Hungarians out of Autocracy. Where Will He Take Them Now?<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNo, they need to trash that plaque,\u201d Murray said. \u201cI really need to shame them into doing the right thing. They won\u2019t do it unless they\u2019re embarrassed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The right thing, in Murray\u2019s estimation, would be inducting the \u201cdifferent hand,\u201d as Sotheby\u2019s put it, that drafted the \u201cLaws.\u201d After a careful penmanship analysis, validated by an expert, Murray had identified that hand as belonging to a Knickerbocker named Daniel Lucius Adams, a.k.a. Doc, the inventor of the shortstop position. As it happened, Thorn had long been making a case for Doc Adams as an unheralded pioneer. \u201cAdams was clearly the one who developed the modern game of baseball,\u201d Murray said, adding that he\u2019d been visited in his office by Adams\u2019s great-granddaughter Marjorie, who wept upon seeing the documents. (She died in 2021, but her nephew Nate Downey will be in Cooperstown, pressing the family\u2019s case.)<\/p>\n

One man\u2019s modernity is, of course, another\u2019s degradation, and, as dinner was served, the conversation turned to such recent innovations as ghost runners, pitch clocks, and robot umps, none of them to Murray\u2019s liking. \u201cTV forced them to speed up the game,\u201d he said with a sigh. \u201cBecause they found that the audiences would drop off very quickly with baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know about Banana Ball?\u201d a woman asked. She was referring to the Savannah Bananas, a Harlem Globetrotters-like outfit prioritizing acrobatics and entertainment over tradition.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s goofy ball,\u201d Murray said, and paused. \u201cWhat the heck. Anything that\u2019s fun, I\u2019m all for it.\u201d\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more Biking Outside the Lines in New York City<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1999, Frank Murray bid in a Sotheby\u2019s auction and nabbed the \u201cLaws of Base Ball,\u201d a nineteenth-century document detailing early rules of America\u2019s pastime. Now it\u2019s worth two hundred and fifty times what he paid, Ben McGrath writes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-follow-the-rules-dept"],"yoast_head":"\nBaseball\u2019s Magna Carta Finds a New Home - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=93\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Baseball\u2019s Magna Carta Finds a New Home - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In 1999, Frank Murray bid in a Sotheby\u2019s auction and nabbed the \u201cLaws of Base Ball,\u201d a nineteenth-century document detailing early rules of America\u2019s pastime. 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