Babe Ruth Sold: The Curse Begins for Red Sox

Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees on December 26, 1919, for $100,000 in cash and a $300,000 loan secured by a mortgage on Fenway Park, completing the most consequential transaction in American sports history. Ruth was 24 years old, had just set the single-season home run record with 29, and was about to transform baseball from a low-scoring strategic contest into a spectacle built around power and personality. Frazee needed money. He had purchased the Red Sox in 1916 largely with borrowed funds and was simultaneously producing Broadway shows, several of which were failing. Ruth, who had led the Red Sox to three World Series titles, was demanding a salary increase to $20,000, a figure Frazee considered ruinous. The Yankees owner, Colonel Jacob Ruppert, and general manager Ed Barrow saw an opportunity to acquire the most talented player in the game and moved quickly. The deal was announced on January 5, 1920, and Boston newspapers denounced it immediately. Ruth rewarded the Yankees beyond anyone expectations. In his first season in New York, he hit 54 home runs, nearly doubling his own record. He drew such enormous crowds that the Yankees built Yankee Stadium, opened in 1923 and immediately nicknamed "The House That Ruth Built." Over the next fifteen seasons, Ruth hit 659 of his 714 career home runs in a Yankees uniform, led the team to seven American League pennants and four World Series championships, and became the most famous athlete on Earth. The Red Sox, meanwhile, did not win another World Series for 86 years. The drought, which became known as the Curse of the Bambino, ended only in 2004 when Boston completed a historic comeback from a 3-0 deficit against the Yankees in the American League Championship Series before sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals for the title. Frazee Broadway career produced one success, "No, No, Nanette" in 1925, a show Red Sox fans have bitterly cited as the real reason Ruth was sold.