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Born in England in 1824, Henry Chadwick immigrated to the United States at age 12. A frequent player of cricket and rounders, Chadwick first saw baseball in 1856 as a cricket reporter for The New York Times.

As the premier reporter and statistician of the game, Chadwick is credited with creating the notion of batting average and earned run average along with the framework for the modern box score.

Chadwick’s biographer Andrew Schiff explained the importance of the creation of the box score. According to the Hall of Fame, Schiff said, “The box score was the only way of showing the game, there really was no photography. So the writer really was the person at the center between the fans and the player at the game.”

Later it was Chadwick who fiercely disagreed with the assertion of Albert Spalding and the Mills Commission on the origins of baseball. Chadwick spoke against the myth of the game’s invention coming in Cooperstown, New York with Abner Doubleday.

Chadwick continued writing about baseball throughout his life. It even led to his demise. Chadwick caught pneumonia while covering Brooklyn’s Opening Day in 1908 and died days later.

Henry Chadwick was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1938. In the collection is this first-edition Charles Dickens book Sunshine on Daily Paths once owned by Chadwick who has written hit name to note his ownership of the book.

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The Hall of Fame plaque gallery recognizes players, umpires, team and league executives. The gallery also honors one sportswriter.

Henry Chadwick was baseball’s preeminent sportswriter in the infancy of the game. His influence continued for a half-century.

From the creation of the box score, to calculation of ERA and batting averages, Chadwick’s influence was vast.

He even received high praise from the official historian of the Hall of Fame, Lee Allen.

According to the Hall’s website, Allen said, “Chadwick was an influence for good at a time when the game badly needed such a person. For years he kept pounding away in print on such subjects as the desirability of temperance and the need for fair treatment of umpires, and he lived to see improvements in those and other areas. ”

Shown here is a close up of the autograph of one of the earliest of pioneers of the game.

The signature of Henry Chadwick is found only in the most advanced collections of Hall of Fame autographs. With an 1824 birth year and and a death year of 1908, surviving examples are more than a century old.