The Yankees Dedicate a Monument to Babe Ruth

On April 19, 1949, the New York Yankees unveiled a granite monument to Babe Ruth in deep center field at Yankee Stadium. Ruth had died of throat cancer the previous August at age fifty-three. His widow Claire and their two daughters stood on the field for the unveiling.

The monument was placed alongside two others already standing in the outfield grass, honoring Miller Huggins and Lou Gehrig. Huggins, Ruth's longtime manager, had been memorialized in 1932. Gehrig's monument had gone up in 1941, two weeks after his death from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The three stone markers sat in the field of play in deep center, roughly 490 feet from home plate. On rare occasions, a ball hit during a game would roll past them.

The ceremony also marked the first game for new manager Casey Stengel, who was fifty-nine years old and widely considered a clown hire. Stengel had managed the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston Braves with consistently losing records. The New York press was skeptical. Stengel would go on to win five consecutive World Series titles from 1949 through 1953, the longest championship streak in professional sports history.

The granite monuments eventually became the foundation of Monument Park, which was formalized in 1976 when the Stadium underwent renovation. Plaques and monuments for DiMaggio, Mantle, Munson, and others joined them over the decades. When the original Yankee Stadium closed in 2008, Monument Park was relocated to the new stadium across the street. Ruth's monument still stands at the center.