Baseball legend Babe Ruth's shirt breaks an auction record

Baseball legend Babe Ruth's shirt broke a sports memorabilia auction record! A 1932 New York Yankees World Series shirt, labeled as 'called shot,' was sold for $24.1m(€21m/£18m) after a six-long auction at Heritage Auction (Irving, Texas). The buyer wished to remain anonymous, but he certainly bagged a great piece of sports history!

"Until 2022, no piece of sports memorabilia had ever broken the symbolic $10 million mark," but that same year a basketball shirt worn by Michael Jordan blew past the threshold. Now fast forward to 2024, and we have a new record with Babe's iconic 'called shot' shirt.

The Sultan of Swat, The Great Bambino, or The Colossus of Clout, Babe Ruth had more nicknames than most, but when you're the home run-hitting, steak and eggs, eating, whiskey chugging King of New York, you've earned each and every one. Let's take a look at the incredible life and career of Babe Ruth.

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George Herman Ruth was born in 1895, growing up in the Baltimore area where he attended an all boys school. It was at school where Ruth would learn how to play baseball, starting life as a dominant pitcher able to throw with unerring accuracy and speed.

Out of school, Ruth was signed by the Baltimore Orioles but quickly sold to the Boston Red Sox, still operating as a pitcher. It was in Boston where Ruth’s mythos began to grow as he converted to an outfielder, allowing him to play every day and do what he did best, hit home runs.

The Red Sox were owned by Harry Frazee, a theatre owner and showrunner who would often fall foul of mysterious financial problems. Speculations suggest he would ease these issues with the sales of high-profile players such as Ruth.

Known to many as ‘The Bambino’, Ruth’s sale to New York was seen as a great tragedy for the Red Sox who had emerged as one of the best teams in baseball and had a chance to dominate for years. However, Ruth was sold and ‘The Curse of The Bambino’ followed, depriving Boston of a World Series for 86 years!

New York is the city that never sleeps, never stops moving and a place where stars are born. This was never more true than in the 1920s with explosive growth and advancing technology allowing easier access to celebrities. With radio broadcasts of MLB games starting in 1921, the name Babe Ruth would now be in everyone’s ears.

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Never the fittest professional athlete, Babe Ruth had a famed diet which would often lead to ballooning weight. A breakfast consisting of steak (always cooked rare), six eggs and fried potatoes doesn’t seem too far-fetched for many athletes given how hard they usually work throughout the day, but washing this all down with a pint of whisky and ginger ale and an entire pot of coffee adds an interesting twist!

If there is one thing Babe Ruth’s diet shows, is his infatuation with slabs of barely cooked meat. For lunch, he would have two entire porterhouse steaks, again cooked rare, a solid start to any lunch. He would also consume two entire heads of lettuce, dripping in blue cheese dressing, and two plates of fried potatoes. If that wasn’t enough he would finish with two entire apple pies.

Usually when picturing a snack, the mind thinks of a piece of fruit or some nuts, perhaps a chocolate bar. For Ruth, this would have been a laughable offering barely even worth thinking about. His ‘snacks’ would consist of four hot dogs and four bottles of Coca-Cola which he would consume around his beef-filled main meals.

This dinner may seem a little familiar, but rest assured this is what the greatest player in baseball history regularly ate. He would eat two entire porterhouse steaks rare, two entire heads of lettuce dripping in blue cheese dressing, and two plates of fried potatoes.

Whilst gigantic in portion sizes, the meals up to this point have been quite appetising (for a meat eater at least). Steak and potatoes with a side of what could potentially be called a salad is something many would only consume as a treat. His dessert of choice is certainly more of an acquired taste where he would eat chocolate ice cream and pickled eels.

Ruth was nearly always a drinker, first partaking in beer as a young teenager and this habit followed him throughout his life. Despite the prohibition of alcohol sales in the US during the 20s, Ruth never struggled to acquire booze. Regularly putting back bottles of whisky by himself the night before games he was never one to worry about the effect it might have on his ball-striking ability, and invariably it didn’t.

Babe Ruth’s diet and drinking habits are enough to put most people into a short coma, let alone send them off to a deep, if uncomfortable sleep. But for Ruth, he was known almost as much for his partying and womanizing as he was for baseball. He would regularly be seen surrounded by women in hotel bars in the very early hours with a game the next day.

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Given his lifestyle, it is no shock that at times Ruth would suffer some ill-health. This was never more true than in 1925 when he was clocked into spring training weighing 260 lbs, well over his ideal playing weight. He collapsed during a training session complaining of stomach issues and was rushed to hospital where premature rumors of his demise leaked, leading to some newspapers printing obituaries.

By the mid-1930s, Babe Ruth was no longer the player he had been, struggling to match his near-immortal feats of the previous decade. After his retirement, he assumed he would be given a role as manager in the MLB, but his reputation preceded him with one owner stating: "How can he manage other men when he can't even manage himself?"

Ruth would spend the rest of his life desperately trying to stay involved in professional baseball in some way, offering his services to many clubs but each time receiving a rejection letter. Aside from a stint as a quasi-on-field mascot/batters coach with the Yankees, he would never be employed by an MLB club again.

By 1946 Ruth was struggling with bouts of ill-health, especially in his head and neck where he was suffering from constant pain. Diagnosed with a malignant tumour in the base of his skull which would have been far too dangerous to operate one.

Ruth was able to receive the absolute cutting-edge of medical technology becoming possibly the first patient treated with radiation and medication at once. Over the course of multiple years, the treatment seemed to be having positive effects as Ruth was able to travel and continue working as a spokesperson and promoter for Ford Motor Company and baseball.

In mid-August 1948, Babe Ruth passed away in his sleep. Despite the best efforts of his doctors, the cancer was too aggressive and he would eventually succumb to the illness. An open casket funeral drew crowds of over 75,000 looking to pay their respects to the man who transcended baseball.

Throughout his playing career, Ruth was a larger-than-life character, embodying everything great about the concept of America at the time. He lived at a time when the world was suddenly becoming much larger, yet he existed in such a small space, inside the batter’s box. Despite this, his name and legacy would stretch across the world.

H.G. Salsinger once wrote that Ruth, “could eat more, drink more, smoke more, swear more and enjoy himself more than any contemporary.” A fitting summation of a man whose life is part myth and part fact. Did he eat half a dozen steaks a day? It's hard to say for sure – it was reported on at the time and thus was cemented into the legend of The Bambino, whose memory lives on to this day as a true American hero.

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