James Naismith’s first basketball rules sell for $4.3 million, thankfully not lost at Kansas City Hooters

UPDATE: And the winners are … University of Kansas donors David and Suzanne Booth. The Star calls the Booth family “well-connected” at KU, which you’d have to be if the school’s Hall of Fame bears your name.

Original Story: A Hooters waitress almost got really, really rich. Sotheby’s auctioned off the first-ever

rules of basketball for $4.3 million. No word on who placed the winning bid.

The 119-year-old document of 13 rules was almost lost forever — as Pitch editor Joe Tone pointed out back in October — at a Kansas City, Kansas, Hooters. Naismith’s grandson Ian Naismith was out for some fine dining with the rules (why he took them inside the restaurant is beyond me) and thought he’d left them in a fireproof briefcase on a stool in a bathroom near a pay phone.