On This Day in Sports: January 5, 1920
On January 5, 1920, Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee announced that Babe Ruth had been sold to the New York Yankees, making public a deal completed in late December. Ruth was 24 and already one of baseball’s most extraordinary players. He had begun as an elite left-handed pitcher, then become a full-time offensive force. In 1919 he hit 29 home runs, a major-league record, while also leading the American League in runs batted in and runs scored. Newspapers understood immediately that the sale was unprecedented, even if no one could yet measure how thoroughly it would redirect the sport.
The agreement sent Ruth’s contract to Yankees owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast Huston for $100,000, payable through cash and promissory notes with interest. Contemporary reports sometimes listed different totals, and a separate $300,000 loan from Ruppert to Frazee followed later with Fenway Park used as collateral. Those details helped turn the transaction into legend, but the basic decision was athletic as well as financial. Ruth wanted improved contract terms after his record season, while Frazee argued that Boston needed money and a more balanced roster. Yankees manager Miller Huggins helped secure Ruth’s agreement while the player was in California.
The immediate baseball effect was startling. Ruth hit 54 home runs in 1920, nearly doubling his own record, and drew huge crowds to the Polo Grounds. In 1921 he hit 59 as New York won its first American League pennant. The Yankees opened Yankee Stadium in 1923 and won their first World Series that year, with Ruth as the sport’s largest attraction. During his Yankees career he hit 659 regular-season home runs and helped the club win four World Series championships. Boston declined and did not win another championship until 2004, though many factors beyond one sale shaped that long drought.
Over time, the transaction became attached to the “Curse of the Bambino,” a later nickname that simplified complicated franchise histories into one memorable story. Its real legacy does not require a curse. The sale placed the era’s most transformative hitter in the nation’s largest media market just as home runs, mass newspapers, radio, and large stadium crowds were changing professional sports. It accelerated the Yankees’ rise, weakened a rival, and made the value of a single superstar impossible for club owners to ignore. January 5 marks the announcement, not the private signing date, but it was the moment the baseball world learned that its balance of power had shifted.
Ruth had moved from star pitcher to record-setting slugger, hitting 29 home runs in 1919 while Boston finished sixth in the American League.
The owners reached their agreement in late December, but January 5 was the day the sale became public through newspapers around the country.
The Yankees acquired Ruth’s contract for $100,000 through cash and installment notes, a record-scale price for a player at the time.
Later retellings often combine the sale with a separate $300,000 loan, so the transaction’s exact headline value varies across contemporary accounts.
Ruth’s home runs and drawing power accelerated the Yankees’ rise into a dominant club and helped make the long ball central to baseball’s appeal.
The later “Curse of the Bambino” story is memorable folklore, but Boston’s drought and New York’s success resulted from many decisions beyond this sale.
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