How do team payroll checks survive?

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Posted By: whitehse

As a former front office employee for a major league baseball team that has been in existance for over a hundred years I can tell you I had alot of alone time in the old ballpark playing security guard on many occasions when the normal security guy would not make it in. I literally was the only one in the place and had the run of the ballpark all to myself. Its lucky for this team that I was honest because I could have removed many items and they would never have found out as they had no way to track these various items as many of these documents were afterthoughts to this team. (this has since changed thanks to Peter Ueberoth as he directed teams to examine what they discard and watch for potential historical documents)

Case in point:

I was snooping in the offices one night and walked into a broom closet that contained 4 regular file cabinets. These cabinets were covered with cleaning products and other junk and were also not locked. I opened one of the drawers and discovered the drawer was jammed full with original player contracts that were signed by the player, team executive and many times a league official. I proceeded to open each and every drawer of all 4 of these file cabinets and each drawer was jammed with the clubs copy of the player contracts. I held in my hand original signed copies of Hall of famers rookie contracts and betond. Legendary players like Rogers Hornsby and KIKI Cuyler and others were literally tossed in this cabinet decades earlier and forgotten about. These were just stuffed in drawers in a broom closet somewhere. I know these contracts have since been secured but I think back on how different my life would be now if I just took 2,3 or 4 of those contracts and sold them for a nice sum of money now. Of course I am not sure if I could live with myself though!

I was also able to walk away from the team with many items that were tossed in the garbage. team records, photos, autographs you name it they tossed it. It was always fun dumpster diving at the end of the day during the off season. So many stories so little time but I think back to that time in my life and would love to go back in time knowing what I know now. I cannot imagine all the stuff I passed on in the dumpster that I should have grabbed.