Bidding for 1919 contract selling Babe Ruth from Red Sox to Yankees starts at $100,000
History buffs and baseball fanatics alike, it’s time to get your wallets out. A contract from the 1919 transaction that sent Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees is up for auction. Lelands, a New York-based sports auction house, started the bidding at $100,000 on Tuesday.
Remembered as one of the most infamous exchanges in the history of the sport, the six-page contract is “the Curse of the Bambino brought to life,” as Lelands puts it. An excerpt of the item description reads:
Here, in the flesh, the stroke of the pens that changed the game of baseball, the world of sports, and our world, simultaneously. This is the contract that sealed the deal between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees to bring Babe Ruth to New York and into the limelight, to make New York the center of the game to this day, create Yankee Stadium “The House That Ruth Built,” create the home run as the money standard of the game, and turn sports into the mega-culture it is today.
The listed item is an original document that once belonged to former Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, according to the auction house. The Red Sox’ copy was sold to a die-hard Yankee fan for $996,000 in a 2005 Sotheby’s auction. Also up for auction is Ruth’s 1927 World Series ring — one of four that he won with New York.
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