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. Soon after he turned his attention to baseball full time. 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. 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.

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