The Red Sox Sell Babe Ruth to the Yankees

On December 26, 1919, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee agreed to sell Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $100,000 in cash and a $300,000 loan secured by a mortgage on Fenway Park. The deal, consummated the day after Christmas, would not be publicly announced until January 5, 1920. By the time news broke, the most consequential transaction in American sports history was already done.

Ruth had just completed a season in which he hit 29 home runs, shattering the single-season record and signaling that he was no longer a pitcher who could hit but a hitter who happened to pitch. He was 24 years old. The Red Sox had won the World Series in 1918 with Ruth on the mound for two of the victories. Selling him made no baseball sense.

Frazee needed money. His theatrical productions on Broadway were losing cash, and Ruth was demanding a raise to $20,000, double his current salary. Frazee calculated that Ruth's value as an asset exceeded his value as a player, at least for the owner's personal finances. Yankees owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast Huston were happy to pay.

Ruth hit 54 home runs in his first season in New York. He hit 59 the next year. The Yankees won their first pennant in 1921 and their first World Series in 1923, the same year they opened Yankee Stadium, "The House That Ruth Built." Boston did not win another World Series until 2004, an 86-year drought that generations of Red Sox fans attributed to the "Curse of the Bambino."

The sale reshaped both franchises for the rest of the century.