Babe Ruth Owned Some Pricey Duds

The only way that the $4,415,658 paid for a 1920 Babe Ruth New York Yankees baseball jersey could be construed as a bargain is if the Babe was still in it—and ready to hit.

Auctioned off Sunday, the uniform that once graced the halls of the Babe Ruth Birthplace Museum in Baltimore (but can now cover the institution’s budget for the next century), will go into private hands.

Wonder how much it would have cost for the Babe’s entire wardrobe, raincoat, swim trunks, underwear and socks, all included. Paying $4 million for a shirt with some other dude’s name on it is hard for me to relate to since I prefer to shop in the Sears men’s department and generally buy upper body wear that is blank on the back.

In any case, the Babe shirt is being described as the most expensive piece of sports memorabilia of all time. Just two years ago a purchaser grabbed Dr. James Naismith’s original 13, hand-written rules of basketball for $4,338,500. That was the old record.

As a sportswriter who has saved just about everything from scorecards, programs, yearbooks and credentials over a long career, I’m betting that everything I own wouldn’t add up to one Babe Ruth shoelace from 1927. Nonetheless, I am always riveted when these items break into the news. It’s like hearing about a $40 million house.

Just a couple of weeks ago I reported on an auction underway that was bringing to market many very high-priced baseball cards. At the time the auction was in progress. It recently concluded. An extremely rare 1909 Honus Wagner card (THE Honus Wagner card), went for $550,000 in that sale.

Another rare error card that was more than a century old sold for more than $300,000. Oh yes, and the Babe got into that action, as well. What was called a Sporting News Babe Ruth rookie card sold for about $120,000.

The Babe was pretty happy to be paid a salary of $80,000 one season. If he had known what he was going to be worth when he died, he would have become the world’s biggest pack rat, neatly folding every article of clothing, carefully wrapping every piece of baseball equipment he ever touched and left it all for his daughters.

I know people who think all of us who collect anything at all are crazy. They view a brought-home game program as clutter that should go out with Tuesday’s trash. They believe that anyone that spends big bucks on a Babe Ruth jersey or a Honus Wagner card would be better off donating the money to charity to feed all of Northern Africa.

From a compassionate, humanitarian standpoint, it’s hard to argue with that. But that very same person may well have a closet full of dresses, a trunk full of shoes, stay in $400 a night hotel rooms or think nothing of dropping $150 for dinner. Hey, some of this is about what turns you on, what gives you pleasure.

I would like to think that any of the big spenders who have a spare $4 million lying around for a Babe Ruth collectible or for a Doc Naismith slice of history, would be generous enough to give a chunk of change to charity, too.

It’s nice to think so, but the buyers of super expensive sports memorabilia usually prefer anonymity, and so do the major charitable donors who write the biggest checks, so we will not know unless Bill Gates surfaces as the owner one of every single baseball card ever manufactured on cardboard.

I don’t care about who is dating who in Hollywood or in the music world. I don’t care about who bought Babe Ruth’s jersey. But I am fascinated by how much someone was willing to pay.