The Yankees needed a power bat in the worst way in 1920, and almost a century ago today, the team announced that they had acquired someone who would be the solution to their power struggles. That man was former Red Sox pitcher/left fielder George Herman Ruth.
Colonel Jacob Ruppert, then the president of the Yankees, dished out the most money ever paid for one player to date, a total of $125,000 to put the slugger in pinstripes. Ruppert also loaned Red Sox owner Harry Frazee somewhere around $300,000 so that Frazee could keep the Red Sox in Fenway Park (not to finance the musical No No, Nanette, which was made years after Ruth’s departure from Boston, as noted in Glenn Stout’s recent book The Selling of the Babe).