Babe Ruth 

Baseball icon Babe Ruth was born George Herman Ruth Jr. on February 6, 1895, in Baltimore,  Maryland. Ruth actually believed his birth date to be February 7, 1894, for the first forty years of his life, and continued using the 1894 date when asked, as he had become used to it by that time. When he was just seven years old, Ruth’s father signed custody of his son over to the Xaverian brothers, Catholic missionaries who ran St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory and orphanage. Ruth spent twelve unhappy years at the school, rarely seeing his family. However, he found a home in baseball, playing catcher on the school’s team until he began pitching around age fifteen. By nineteen years old, the owner and manager of the Baltimore Orioles, Jack Dunn, recognized the prodigious player’s talent and signed him to a contract. His teammates began referring to him as “Jack's newest babe,” and the name Babe stuck forevermore.

After just five months with the Baltimore Orioles, The Boston Red Sox purchased Ruth’s contract, and the nineteen-year-old became a Major Leaguer. After five years with the Boston Red Sox, Ruth went on to play for the New York Yankees from 1920 to 1934, and the Boston Braves in 1935. It has been said that when Ruth left The Boston Red Sox, he left behind a curse, condemning the Red Sox to years and years of failure and never quite letting them get to the World Series. In 2004, the curse was broken when the Boston Red Sox finally won a World Series.

Known as the greatest player in baseball history, Ruth became the only player to have mastered both pitching and hitting. By 1920, he cemented his status as a seasoned swinger by hitting more home runs than any previous player in the sport, as well as any other team in the American League. He held the record for home runs at 714 until 1974 when Hank Aaron topped his record. Four Americans have surpassed Babe's single-season home run record, including Roger Maris, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds. 

Beyond baseball, Ruth became known for his easygoing nature and a love of life that extended to eating, drinking, and womanizing. In 1914, Ruth married seventeen-year-old waitress Helen Woodford. The couple adopted a baby girl, Dorothy, in 1921. Although the pair separated in 1925, they did not divorce due to religious reasons. In 1929, Ruth’s wife died tragically in a house fire, and he was remarried to actress and model Claire Hodgson later that year. 

In 1929, the Yankees became the first team to regularly use uniform numbers, assigning Ruth to number three as he batted third in the order. Uniform numbers eventually became associated with players regardless of their batting order, and The Yankees retired Ruth's number on June 13, 1948. The first number the team had retired was Lou Gehrig's number. 

In 2005, the 1918 contract which propelled Ruth from Boston to New York was auctioned off for $996,000 at Sotheby's. However, it was not the most valuable piece of Babe-memorabilia – at a Sotheby's auction in December 2004, the bat Ruth used to hit the first home run at Yankee Stadium sold for $1.26 million. The ball which Ruth hit on his first and only minor-league home run in 1914 in Toronto, Ontario, has reportedly never been recovered, and is said to lie motionless somewhere at the bottom of Lake Ontario. 

After his retirement, Ruth lent his time to giving talks on the radio as well as in orphanages and hospitals. On August 16, 1948, at age fifty-three, Ruth lost his life to cancer at Memorial Hospital in New York City. Over 100,000 people stood outside the entrance of Yankee Stadium to pay their last respects to one of the world’s greatest sports heroes.  

YUDDY