The Babe Ruth Deal, Part. 1
Caption: Babe Ruth in his first season with New York, 1920. Photograph by Paul Thompson. Wikicommons.
One hundred years ago today … New York Yankees co-owner and President Colonel Jacob Ruppert, Jr. announced that he had bought the contractual rights to baseball star Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox. Speaking with reporters at his 250 West 42nd Street office, Ruppert declared:
“It is not only our intention, but a strong life purpose, moreover, to give the loyal American League fans of greater New York an opportunity to root for our team in a world’s series. We are going to give them a pennant winner, no matter what the cost. I think the addition of Ruth to our forces should help greatly along those general lines.”
Contract between New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, December 26th,1919. Courtesy Baseball Hall of Fame.
The deal had actually been completed ten days earlier—and had been in the works far longer. Before the 1919 season, Ruth had signed a three-year contract for $10,000 per year, but his groundbreaking performance (a record 29 home runs) and surging popularity spurred him to announce, at the end of the year, that he would sit out 1920 unless he got a new deal for twice as much. Ruth was probably aware that there was no chance the cash-strapped Red Sox woner Harry Frazee would or could comply, and that there were at most two teams able to pay a player such a high figure, the Yankees and the Chicago White Sox. He may also have been considering that the Yankees had just finished in third place (the White Sox of “Black Sox” fame, finished in first) and would be looking to improve. He may also have been considering that the Red Sox had recently traded pitcher Carl Mays to New York in a deal that sent $75,000 to Boston, the latest in a series of similar deals between the two teams. It is reported that years later he admitted hoping his demands would indirectly land him on the Yankees.
The Knickerbocker Hotel, 1907. The Detroit Publishing Company. Library of Congress.
Those watching closely could have predicted what was about to happen. On an evening in December, Frazee and Barrow, who both lived in New York, met at the Knickerbocker Hotel, at the southeast corner of 42nd Street and Broadway, a place that in its 14-year existence had become important enough to New York high society to be nicknamed the “42nd Street Country Club.”
At the hotel bar, Frazee, presumably feeling that Barrow should hear it straight from the boss, broke the news that a Ruth deal was all but done.
More on Ruth, Ruppert, and the connection to Prohibition in tomorrow’s January 6 post.
WRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN, JANUARY 5, 2020.
Tags: Babe Ruth, Jacob Ruppert, Knickerbocker Hotel, Boston
Sources: Reisler, Babe Ruth: Launching the Legend. Spatz and Steinberg, The Colonel and Hug. Stout, The Selling of the Babe.