strat production date

While in the process of changing strings on my 1973 strat serial no 421 552, I got the idea of taking off the neck to look at the date stamped there. I date it 1973 as I wrote Fender in 1977, the year I bought it, and they dated it 1973.Still got that letter. Hopefully someone here can help me interprete the numbers, as i don't understand them. On the back of the neck J. TORRES is stamped, and on the end of the neck the following numbers appear: 0901 2823 . In the neck pocket the letters AYALA is stamped and something which is harder to read goes like BABE or 3873 when read upside down and using a bit imagination. There also is written what could be M or W with pencil.
I would greatly appreciate if anyone here could help on this issue. I've seen pictures of other neck dates, and they seemed perfectly understandable, but this I just don't have a clue.
greetings

0901 2823 is probably Fender's internal part number.

Babe could be Virgilio "Babe" Simoni, a Fender employee in the 60's and 70's, and responsible :wah: for guitars like the Maverick and the Swinger/Arrow/Musiclander.

I don't know anything special about "J. Torres" and "Ayala" but they seem like familiar Fender names.

"Richard Hand" was somebody who did final QC on amps. Supposedly he used to work in drumsticks, but that's another story.

thanks to Kap'n for speedy reaction within minutes of my post. I also find the spanish-sounding names kind of Fender-ish. Since its may 1 its like a sunday here, and I've spent the time since my original post, nearly 3 hours, inspecting pots and pickups and using google a lot. Here's what I found:
neck stamp: 0901 2823:
09 mean strat, 01 mean custom finish, rosewood neck
2823: third digit mean 1972
pickups:
stamped 19 29 73: the 73 mean 1973
post:
stamped 137 73 12: 137 mean CTS, 73 mean 1973 and 12 mean 12th week, that is end of march.
I'm a bit disappointed with the findings, as when I found the neck date, I was hoping pots and pickups were also 1972, so that I could date the guitar 1972. At least it wasn't any 1974 dates, the serial no could just as well indicate that.
This calls for a Guiness waiting for the battle in Liverpool to decide which team will play Man U in the Champions League final.