Babe Ruth (born February 6, 1895, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—died August 16, 1948, New York, New York) was chosen as one of the first five members of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, a year after he finished his career. He transformed baseball through his home-run hitting, which produced an offensive revolution in the sport. His accomplishments, together with his personal charisma and his rags-to-riches life story, made Ruth the most celebrated American athlete of his era, immortalized as the Sultan of Swat and the Bambino.
And so began the curse.
The deal that changed the game
Written by: Matt Kelly
In the early months of 1919, everything appeared to be going smoothly for the Red Sox.
Just below the surface, however, financial woes were threatening the future of the Boston club. Despite a pennant-winning season in 1918, dwindling wartime attendance caused the club’s gate receipts to drop 35 percent. Meanwhile, club owner Harry Frazee was hemorrhaging money due to struggles with his theatrical productions in New York.
Amid all of this, the team’s most popular player began to feel that he was worth more than what he was being paid. In January 1919, Babe Ruth demanded a new contract. Specifically, he requested his yearly salary be raised from $7,000 to $15,000 – a figure that only the great Ty Cobb was making at the time. He also wanted to play left field exclusively, telling the press, “I’ll win more games playing every day in the outfield than I will pitching every fourth day.”
Frazee scoffed at Ruth’s demands, and Ruth held out and became front-page fodder for Hub newspapers. But when the team’s ship set sail for Spring Training in Florida – and a lucrative exhibition series scheduled with John McGraw’s Giants – without its star on board, both sides sensed it was time to come to the table. Frazee and Ruth settled for a $10,000 yearly salary just weeks before Opening Day, but when the slugger set a new home run record with 29 blasts in 1919, it was clear that new three-year contract would not stick. That winter, Yankees owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast Huston offered the cash-poor Frazee a deal he felt he couldn’t refuse, setting into motio