Did a Broadway Play Really Sell Babe Ruth?

In early January of 1920, a Boston newspaper announced that the Red Sox had sold Babe Ruth for $100,000 cash. The owner was Harry Frazee, who also produced plays on Broadway, and decades later a story took hold: he did it to pay for a musical, and Boston was cursed for 86 years. The record is plainer. The price was paid in installments, the famous $300,000 loan came five months later, and the musical, No, No, Nanette, opened on Broadway in September of 1925, two years after Frazee had sold the team. The phrase "Curse of the Bambino" was not in common use until a 1990 book. So what did happen, and who was telling the story afterward? Historians still disagree about whether Frazee was short of cash or simply doing business. What this covers: How Harry Frazee bought the Red Sox in 1916 with borrowed money, and his feud with American League president Ban Johnson Ruth's record 29 home runs in 1919, his demand for $20,000, and the December 26, 1919 deal with Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast Huston The price, paid as $25,000 in cash plus yearly notes, and the two newspaper headlines with two different numbers The $300,000 Fenway Park loan from Ruppert in May of 1920, and where about $125,000 of it went The historians who say Frazee needed cash, and Glenn Stout, who says he was not broke My Lady Friends, the play that opened three weeks before the deal, and No, No, Nanette, which reached Broadway nearly six years after it The other Red Sox players who went to New York, and the Yankees' first World Series title in 1923 A 1986 New York Times column by George Vecsey, Dan Shaughnessy's 1990 book, and Boston's 2004 comeback It was a business deal, not a spell. Every October, somebody goes looking for a curse. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ❤️ It's just me making these. If this one was worth your time, a like helps more than you'd think. If not, all good. See you in the next one. Wren ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ S O U R C E S ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE SALE AND THE MONEY Francis, B., 2020, "One hundred years later, sale of Ruth to Yankees remains pivotal point in history," National Baseball Hall of Fame. The December 26, 1919 deal, the installment terms, the signed note, the two headlines and Frazee's stated reasons. Kelly, M., "The deal that changed the game," National Baseball Hall of Fame. Background on the sale and the dispute over Ruth's pay. Levitt, D. R., Armour, M. and Levitt, M., 2008, "History versus Harry Frazee: Re-revising the Story," Baseball Research Journal, SABR. The debt, the May 1920 Fenway loan, the April 1920 letter to Ruppert, and Nanette's 1925 profit. Stout, G., "Harry Frazee," SABR BioProject (rev. 31 October 2020). The case that Frazee was not broke, the feud with Ban Johnson, and the split opinion in 1920. Thomson, D. K., "Why the Broadway showman who dumped Babe Ruth and the Red Sox was smarter than we think," Boston Globe Magazine, 16 October 2020. How the loan let Frazee put money into both businesses. Steinberg, S., 2006, "The Curse of the ... Hurlers? Consequential Yankees-Red Sox Trades of Note," Baseball Research Journal, SABR. The other Boston players sold to New York, 1918 to 1923. THE CURSE Vecsey, G., "Sports of the Times: Babe Ruth Curse Strikes Again," The New York Times, 28 October 1986. The 1986 column about ghosts, demons and curses after the World Series loss. Shaughnessy, D., 1990, The Curse of the Bambino, Dutton. The book that made the name common. Curse of the Bambino; No, No, Nanette; Harry Frazee; Ned Williamson; Babe Ruth; Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, Wikipedia. Nanette's dates, the 1925 season, Ruth's home run totals, Frazee's death and the 1923 roster. THE ANSWER ON THE FIELD 1923 World Series; 2004 American League Championship Series; 2004 World Series, Wikipedia. Yankee Stadium's opening, the first Yankees title, the 2004 comeback and the sweep. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #history #baseball #babeRuth #redsox #documentary