For sophisticated baseball collectors and historians, there are certain pieces that surface once in a lifetime. This is one of those incredibly rare opportunities – a white whale of sorts – in the autograph space. Fresh to the hobby and recently encapsulated by PSA/DNA comes the first ever authenticated signature of Louis Fenn Wadsworth.

In the late 1840s and early 1850s, Wadsworth was a star first baseman for the Gotham Base Ball Club before joining the New York Knickerbockers, American’s first organized baseball team, in 1854. He is credited by John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s official historian, as the first professional baseball player. It was Wadsworth’s instrumental contributions to the rules of the game, however, that have elevated his status in recent years to a level of Doc Adams, whose 1857 “Laws of Base Ball” document (sold by SCP Auctions in 2016 for 3.26 million) helped redefine the sport’s true founding fathers.

Thanks to Thorn and other historians, Wadsworth now ranks among the most significant – yet still grossly underappreciated – architects of baseball’s foundational rules and structure that helped modernize the sport. He is largely credited with standardizing nine innings per game, nine players per side, and a diamond-shaped field – perhaps the three most critical elements that define America’s Pastime. Despite his profound legacy, Wadsworth died impoverished and nearly forgotten. Only in recent decades has his name begun to receive proper historical recognition. His induction into the Cooperstown is well-deserved and could be on the horizon in the not-so-distant future.

PSA/DNA has never authenticated a Wadsworth autograph until now. This ancient cut signature, reading “Lou. F. Wadsworth, Sec’y” in lovely black fountain ink, is one of only two known according to Thorn, who referenced it in photos and correspondence as an exemplar to assist PSA in their authentication efforts. The absurd scarcity of a Wadsworth autograph, combined with his pivotal role as pioneer player and inventor, makes this perhaps the “Button Gwinnett” (Declaration of Independence signer who died shortly thereafter) of baseball signatures. With the inscription, Thorn traces it to Wadsworth’s time as secretary of the Whig Unionists in NYC’s 8th Ward, circa 1851-52, coinciding with his amateur playing days for the Gotham Base Ball Club.

More on Wadsworth and his Contributions to Baseball

Born in 1825 and a graduate of Washington College (Hartford, CT), Louis Wadsworth worked as a Naval office attorney while playing organized baseball on the side and developing an intense passion for how the game should be played. In 1857, he was one of three Knickerbocker delegates at the first convention of baseball clubs alongside Doc Adams and William Grenelle at a hotel in New York City where the official “Laws of Base Ball” were first introduced. It was Wadsworth who successfully proposed replacing the traditional seven-inning format with nine innings per game – a motion that reversed the initial vote of the convention, and defined baseball as we know it. Contemporary research by Major League Baseball also credits Wadsworth with introducing the first formal diagram of the baseball diamond, possibly the earliest visual rendering of the sport’s now-iconic layout. These innovations positioned him as a central architect in the codification of baseball’s rules, rivaling or even eclipsing the roles of more widely celebrated figures like Alexander Cartwright and Abner Doubleday. Though he enjoyed early prestige and married into wealth in 1859, Wadsworth’s later years were marked by decline. After years as a judge in Plainfield, NJ, personal setbacks and alcoholism left him destitute, and he died in obscurity in 1908.