September 5, 2025 • 9 mins
These days a lot of folks complain that sports has become simply a money game. But that trend actually began over a century ago with the wild antics and baseball genius of Babe Ruth.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All Right, as we close in on the World Series
and the end of the baseball season, it kind of
seems like the perfect time to look back at probably
the most legendary player in baseball history, Babe Ruth.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Now, this guy was a.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wild man, an unbelievable player, but also a huge eater, drinker, womanizer,
and troublemaker. Plus his path to the New York Yankees
and the house at Ruth built was fascinating. I'm Patty
Steele breaking all the rules and turning baseball into a
massive payday. That's next on the backstory. We're back with
(00:39):
the backstory. September is an absolutely gorgeous month, fresh air,
blue skies, the start of the NFL season, and the
baseball season wraps up with the World Series. But doesn't
it freak you out that there are guys playing baseball
for around seven months a year that make hundreds of
millions of dollars off of it. I mean, Soto signed
(01:00):
a fifteen year deal with the New York Mets for
seven hundred and sixty five million dollars. That's fifty one
million dollars a year, or almost ninety thousand bucks each
time he steps up to the plate. How ironically, in
twenty nineteen, Soto won the Babe Ruth Award exactly one
hundred years after Babe Ruth was sold to the New
(01:22):
York Yankees by the owner of the Boston Red Sox.
Sportswriters say Sodo's stats are similar to Babes and that
he's on track to challenge all time records that are
still held by Babe. Two guys that changed the game.
Babe Ruth was born in eighteen ninety five in a
section of Baltimore called Pigtown Nice Start. He was one
(01:43):
of seven kids, but only he and his little sister
survived to adulthood. His dad owned a saloon and wasn't
much of a father. With Babe skipping school, running in
the streets, and drinking beer, his dad said he ran
out of ideas on how to discipline the kid, who,
by the way, was only seven years old, and so
Babe then was sent to a Catholic orphanage and reform
(02:05):
school for delinquent boys. He spent most of the next
twelve years there. It turned out to be a blessing.
Babe learned some discipline, gathered some skill sets like tailoring,
and most importantly, the school's head of discipline, brother Matthias,
mentored Babe and taught him how.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
To properly hit a baseball.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Now. On the downside, food at the school was scarce,
and folks that knew him say Babe's lifelong obsession with
food probably stemmed from the.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Deprivation he went through there.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
By the time he was eighteen, Babe was leaving the
school on weekends to go play baseball for local teams.
In nineteen fourteen, at nineteen years old, he was signed
by the minor league Baltimore Orioles, and he was off.
He headed a spring training in North Carolina. It was
his first trip outside of Baltimore in his entire life.
(02:58):
That same year, he sold to the Boston Red Sox.
After a kind of rocky start, he stepped up his game.
He definitely had a big mouth, and his teammates weren't fans.
They called him the Big Baboon and would sometimes saw
his bats in half before he arrived at the ballpark.
Even though he had married Helen, a sixteen year old waitress,
(03:20):
pretty soon after arriving in Boston, he also had more money,
and that's when he started to indulge his appetite for food, liquor,
and women. By nineteen nineteen, he was pretty much the
Red Sox main attraction. Now, the problem is the team's owner,
Harry Fraser, was actually less interested in baseball than he
(03:41):
was in theater. He was financing his stage shows by
selling off the Red Sox best baseball players. So when
Babe wanted to raise from ten thousand dollars a year
to twenty thousand, he said he'd leave the team if
he didn't get it prize. He didn't believe him, but
Babe was determined. After all, nineteen nineteen he had twenty
(04:01):
nine homers.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The next highest.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Number in baseball that year was twelve, So Frase decided
his best option was to sell his best player. It
was a tough negotiation with the Yankees, who in the
end bought Babe for one hundred thousand dollars in cash,
the most ever paid for a ballplayer, doubling the previous
high of fifty thousand bucks. They also gave Frasey a
(04:25):
loan of three hundred thousand dollars to pay off debts
on Fenway Park. In a press conference to tell Boston
the news, phrase said no other club could afford to
give the amount the Yankees have paid for him, and
I don't mind saying I think they're taking a gamble.
While Ruth is undoubtedly the greatest hitter the game has
ever seen, he is likewise one of the most selfish
(04:48):
and inconsiderate men ever to put on a baseball uniform. Well,
Boston fans were furious and they didn't buy phrase putting
the blame on Babe. The Boston Post had a cartoon
showing historic Fenel Hall and the Boston Public Library with
for sale signs on them. They said no local landmark
was safe with Harry Frazie in town. For the Boston
(05:10):
Red Sox, it was the curse of the Bambino, as
Babe was called. The team never won another World Series
until two thousand and four, but Babe was beginning his
historic run with the Yankees. The money started pouring in.
By nineteen twenty six, he was making fifty two thousand
dollars a season. That was a fortune back then. So
(05:33):
far he'd made about a million dollars from baseball, as
well as through syndicated newspaper articles, the movies, vaudeville exhibition
games after the regular season, and by endorsing ice cream
baseball shoes, caps, suspenders, and tons of other stuff, But
he had no clue how to handle money. He spent
it as fast as he made it. He bet as
(05:54):
much as twenty six thousand dollars on a single horse
race and lost. After visiting Cuba, he was forced to
cancel his ticket home because he owed sixty five thousand
dollars to bookies. Fortunately, his wife had saved plenty of
money and invested it, so she bailed him out. A
close friend who was a writer for the New Yorker
(06:14):
magazine wrote an article about Babe. He said he was
a bit of a hypochondriac, but, as he put it,
continued to devour unheard of quantities of murderous food at
astonishingly frequent intervals. For breakfast, he'd have four eggs and
a large steak, coffee, and a pint of bourbon, among
other things. While at the ballpark, he'd eat up to
(06:36):
eight hot dogs and drink a half gallon of Coca cola.
A typical dinner was two Porterhouse steaks, a plate of
fried potatoes, two heads of lettuce drenched in blue cheese dressing,
and an entire apple pie. And that didn't include a
very similar late night dinner his New Yorker pals set.
After drinking and partying with random girls, Babe loved to
(06:59):
hunt for frogs late at night, attaching a light to
his rifle before heading out. He went on to say
that at one point his manager begged Babe to stop
the craziness and take care of himself. So Babe agreed
and went to bed early and rose early, stopped the
excess of women, liquor, and food for exactly three days,
(07:21):
during which time he failed to make a single hit,
let alone a home run. Babe exploded and stormed out.
In fact, he stayed out all night, went to the
ballpark with only an hour's sleep, and then in one game,
hit two of his longest home runs ever. Said his
New Yorker pal, he is simply a freak, but a
(07:41):
lovable one. The Yankees agreed, In fact, they shared in
the cost of building a tunnel from Babe's golf club
into Yankee Stadium so Babe could play until the very
last minute and still make the game. But they knew
how vulnerable he was, and the team owners finally resorted
to having him followed by detail actives to protect him
from himself. As well as from con artists, blackmailers, bookies, gamblers, and,
(08:07):
as they.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Put it, scheming young ladies.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Babe Ruth definitely changed the way ballplayers were paid for
their talent. Despite his wild lifestyle, Babe managed to survive
to the age of fifty eight. When he died of
cancer in nineteen forty eight. A baseball writer said about him,
if sport has become the national religion, then Babe Ruth
is the patron saint. He stands at the heart of
(08:31):
the game. He played the promise of a warm summer night,
a bag of peanuts and a beer, and just maybe
the longest ball hit out of the ballpark. I hope
you're enjoying the Backstory with Patty steel Please leave a
review and follow or subscribe for free to get new
episodes delivered automatically. Also feel free to DM me if
(08:53):
you have a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook,
It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm
Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
the Elvis Durant Group and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
(09:15):
is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out
to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram
at real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.
All Right, as we close in on the World Series
and the end of the baseball season, it kind of
seems like the perfect time to look back at probably
the most legendary player in baseball history, Babe Ruth.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Now, this guy was a.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wild man, an unbelievable player, but also a huge eater, drinker, womanizer,
and troublemaker. Plus his path to the New York Yankees
and the house at Ruth built was fascinating. I'm Patty
Steele breaking all the rules and turning baseball into a
massive payday. That's next on the backstory. We're back with
(00:39):
the backstory. September is an absolutely gorgeous month, fresh air,
blue skies, the start of the NFL season, and the
baseball season wraps up with the World Series. But doesn't
it freak you out that there are guys playing baseball
for around seven months a year that make hundreds of
millions of dollars off of it. I mean, Soto signed
(01:00):
a fifteen year deal with the New York Mets for
seven hundred and sixty five million dollars. That's fifty one
million dollars a year, or almost ninety thousand bucks each
time he steps up to the plate. How ironically, in
twenty nineteen, Soto won the Babe Ruth Award exactly one
hundred years after Babe Ruth was sold to the New
(01:22):
York Yankees by the owner of the Boston Red Sox.
Sportswriters say Sodo's stats are similar to Babes and that
he's on track to challenge all time records that are
still held by Babe. Two guys that changed the game.
Babe Ruth was born in eighteen ninety five in a
section of Baltimore called Pigtown Nice Start. He was one
(01:43):
of seven kids, but only he and his little sister
survived to adulthood. His dad owned a saloon and wasn't
much of a father. With Babe skipping school, running in
the streets, and drinking beer, his dad said he ran
out of ideas on how to discipline the kid, who,
by the way, was only seven years old, and so
Babe then was sent to a Catholic orphanage and reform
(02:05):
school for delinquent boys. He spent most of the next
twelve years there. It turned out to be a blessing.
Babe learned some discipline, gathered some skill sets like tailoring,
and most importantly, the school's head of discipline, brother Matthias,
mentored Babe and taught him how.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
To properly hit a baseball.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Now. On the downside, food at the school was scarce,
and folks that knew him say Babe's lifelong obsession with
food probably stemmed from the.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Deprivation he went through there.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
By the time he was eighteen, Babe was leaving the
school on weekends to go play baseball for local teams.
In nineteen fourteen, at nineteen years old, he was signed
by the minor league Baltimore Orioles, and he was off.
He headed a spring training in North Carolina. It was
his first trip outside of Baltimore in his entire life.
(02:58):
That same year, he sold to the Boston Red Sox.
After a kind of rocky start, he stepped up his game.
He definitely had a big mouth, and his teammates weren't fans.
They called him the Big Baboon and would sometimes saw
his bats in half before he arrived at the ballpark.
Even though he had married Helen, a sixteen year old waitress,
(03:20):
pretty soon after arriving in Boston, he also had more money,
and that's when he started to indulge his appetite for food, liquor,
and women. By nineteen nineteen, he was pretty much the
Red Sox main attraction. Now, the problem is the team's owner,
Harry Fraser, was actually less interested in baseball than he
(03:41):
was in theater. He was financing his stage shows by
selling off the Red Sox best baseball players. So when
Babe wanted to raise from ten thousand dollars a year
to twenty thousand, he said he'd leave the team if
he didn't get it prize. He didn't believe him, but
Babe was determined. After all, nineteen nineteen he had twenty
(04:01):
nine homers.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The next highest.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Number in baseball that year was twelve, So Frase decided
his best option was to sell his best player. It
was a tough negotiation with the Yankees, who in the
end bought Babe for one hundred thousand dollars in cash,
the most ever paid for a ballplayer, doubling the previous
high of fifty thousand bucks. They also gave Frasey a
(04:25):
loan of three hundred thousand dollars to pay off debts
on Fenway Park. In a press conference to tell Boston
the news, phrase said no other club could afford to
give the amount the Yankees have paid for him, and
I don't mind saying I think they're taking a gamble.
While Ruth is undoubtedly the greatest hitter the game has
ever seen, he is likewise one of the most selfish
(04:48):
and inconsiderate men ever to put on a baseball uniform. Well,
Boston fans were furious and they didn't buy phrase putting
the blame on Babe. The Boston Post had a cartoon
showing historic Fenel Hall and the Boston Public Library with
for sale signs on them. They said no local landmark
was safe with Harry Frazie in town. For the Boston
(05:10):
Red Sox, it was the curse of the Bambino, as
Babe was called. The team never won another World Series
until two thousand and four, but Babe was beginning his
historic run with the Yankees. The money started pouring in.
By nineteen twenty six, he was making fifty two thousand
dollars a season. That was a fortune back then. So
(05:33):
far he'd made about a million dollars from baseball, as
well as through syndicated newspaper articles, the movies, vaudeville exhibition
games after the regular season, and by endorsing ice cream
baseball shoes, caps, suspenders, and tons of other stuff, But
he had no clue how to handle money. He spent
it as fast as he made it. He bet as
(05:54):
much as twenty six thousand dollars on a single horse
race and lost. After visiting Cuba, he was forced to
cancel his ticket home because he owed sixty five thousand
dollars to bookies. Fortunately, his wife had saved plenty of
money and invested it, so she bailed him out. A
close friend who was a writer for the New Yorker
(06:14):
magazine wrote an article about Babe. He said he was
a bit of a hypochondriac, but, as he put it,
continued to devour unheard of quantities of murderous food at
astonishingly frequent intervals. For breakfast, he'd have four eggs and
a large steak, coffee, and a pint of bourbon, among
other things. While at the ballpark, he'd eat up to
(06:36):
eight hot dogs and drink a half gallon of Coca cola.
A typical dinner was two Porterhouse steaks, a plate of
fried potatoes, two heads of lettuce drenched in blue cheese dressing,
and an entire apple pie. And that didn't include a
very similar late night dinner his New Yorker pals set.
After drinking and partying with random girls, Babe loved to
(06:59):
hunt for frogs late at night, attaching a light to
his rifle before heading out. He went on to say
that at one point his manager begged Babe to stop
the craziness and take care of himself. So Babe agreed
and went to bed early and rose early, stopped the
excess of women, liquor, and food for exactly three days,
(07:21):
during which time he failed to make a single hit,
let alone a home run. Babe exploded and stormed out.
In fact, he stayed out all night, went to the
ballpark with only an hour's sleep, and then in one game,
hit two of his longest home runs ever. Said his
New Yorker pal, he is simply a freak, but a
(07:41):
lovable one. The Yankees agreed, In fact, they shared in
the cost of building a tunnel from Babe's golf club
into Yankee Stadium so Babe could play until the very
last minute and still make the game. But they knew
how vulnerable he was, and the team owners finally resorted
to having him followed by detail actives to protect him
from himself. As well as from con artists, blackmailers, bookies, gamblers, and,
(08:07):
as they.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Put it, scheming young ladies.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Babe Ruth definitely changed the way ballplayers were paid for
their talent. Despite his wild lifestyle, Babe managed to survive
to the age of fifty eight. When he died of
cancer in nineteen forty eight. A baseball writer said about him,
if sport has become the national religion, then Babe Ruth
is the patron saint. He stands at the heart of
(08:31):
the game. He played the promise of a warm summer night,
a bag of peanuts and a beer, and just maybe
the longest ball hit out of the ballpark. I hope
you're enjoying the Backstory with Patty steel Please leave a
review and follow or subscribe for free to get new
episodes delivered automatically. Also feel free to DM me if
(08:53):
you have a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook,
It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm
Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
the Elvis Durant Group and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
(09:15):
is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out
to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram
at real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.
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