Babe Ruth Boston Red Sox 1916 M101-5 Sporting News Blank Back #151 PSA 3 | Rookie Card

1916: The Great War rages. The United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire’s forces have just finished fighting at Gallipoli while Grigori Rasputin is fostering his friendship with the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family. Meanwhile, Woodrow Wilson is running for re-election as President of the United States in part on a platform of working to keep the United States out of the first World War while also contending with the ascendant Temperance movement.

Against this historic backdrop came the ascendancy of perhaps the most important baseball player to date: Babe Ruth. Ruth had been plucked from St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys in Baltimore in 1914 to play in the minors with the Baltimore Orioles before being snatched up by the Red Sox later that year. The youngster immediately made a major impact on the team and had already shown his ability to both pitch with the league’s best and also to knock the cover off a baseball with his bat. 

Baseball, and baseball cards, had already become a big part of the fabric of American culture. Names like Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner were household names, and their likenesses were regularly used to sell cigarettes and caramels alike along with other candies as well as bread and other products with promotional cards, such as with the now famous T206 set released by the American Tobacco Company.

1916 saw the release of another similar set of cards: the M101-5. Published by Chicago photographer Felix Mendelsohn, these cards were produced in sheets and as individual items with blank backs, with businesses able to purchase them to place advertisements on the back. The cards featured high quality photographs of each of its 200 subjects in a sepia tone and has become a favorite among collectors thanks to the quality of the images, the added element of various backs, and the checklist chock full of Hall of Fame players. The crown jewel of this set is what many consider to be among the most sought after baseball cards ever produced: Babe Ruth’s rookie card. Ruth’s only previous entry of note was the 1914 Baltimore News issue, however that showed Babe as a minor leaguer. There are 18 known companies that took his cards on to distribute with their products including the bakery Morehouse and, most famously, the magazine Sporting News, which ended up lending its name to the set in popular discourse. The blank backs were also made available to the general public, which is where the offered example comes in.

This is a new-to-hobby example. It has never left the family of the original owner and has now traveled with the family through four generations and from Chicago to New York and then to Boston. The original owner, a grandchild of Jewish immigrants from Germany, immersed himself in America’s Pastime and collected a near-complete set of these blank backs as a teen in Chicago. He lived there his whole life and passed the cards to his daughter, who brought them with her to New York. She then gave the collection to her son in the 1990s before she passed, noting that the cards may be worth something someday. How right she was.

Her son, the third-generation owner of this card, raised his own family in Boston, just a short walk from where the rookie pitcher featured on their family heirloom made his name: Fenway Park. Thanks in part to this proximity, his sons, now the fourth generation to claim this collection, grew up to be passionate Red Sox fans. They watched as the Curse of the Bambino was lifted after 86 years: The Red Sox had won their first World Series since Babe Ruth was infamously traded away.

The brothers kept Ruth and the rest of their great-grandfather’s near-complete set safe for two decades more and, now adults, approached Sotheby’s with the cards in ungraded condition. After assessment by PSA, the Babe Ruth was not only authenticated but awarded a PSA 3. Only 36 examples have been authenticated by PSA and of those, only 22 have been awarded higher grades. Few of Babe Ruth’s rookie cards have such a complete story of their provenance, with this 109 year old example becoming available for the first time since it was released. Sotheby’s is proud to have helped encapsulate the moments this card represents in baseball and baseball card history as well as the connection of family members separated by multiple generations and decades but connected through their common love for America’s Pastime. Do not miss this opportunity to acquire a fresh-to-market example of one of the most important baseball cards ever produced of the player that defined a century of baseball.

The PSA certificate number for this card is: 106614471.

Going Deeper - Babe Ruth

In the pantheon of sporting legends of the United States, few are more legendary, more mythologized, more woven into the broader pop culture than the one known simply as “The Babe.”

Born George Herman Ruth Jr. on February 6, 1895, Babe Ruth’s path to baseball stardom was not easy. His father, George Ruth Sr., was said to have worked a number of jobs including as a saloon keeper as well as a lightning rod salesman and his mother was frequently in ill health. The largely unsupervised Ruth spent much of his time along the Baltimore waterfront and seemed to have a penchant for petty theft and vandalism. At the age of seven, his parents applied for the city to declare the boy “incorrigible” and sent him to live at St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys on the outskirts of the city. Although he moved in and out of the school frequently for the first couple of years, by 1904 he had begun a long term residence at the school. 

St. Mary’s was founded by the Xaverian Brothers, a group of Catholics that had been founded in 1839 and found their way to the United States in the 1850s. In an era characterized by poverty and sectarian bigotry for Catholics and Catholic immigrants in the United States, the brotherhood set up these schools in part to counter such forces. Opening in 1866, the school welcomed 20,000 residents over the course of the next 94 years of all ages between five and 21. Among a rigorous schedule that included allocated time for play and prayer was time set aside for academic or vocational education as well as work such as that of a printer, shoemaker, electrician, carpenter, florist, and launderer. Among this environment of faith, rigidity, and discipline, Ruth found his calling on the diamond.

Brother Matthias, a towering 6-foot-6, 250 pound giant, was the first to spot the spark in the young Ruth. Born Martin Leo Boutilier in Nova Scotia, Canada, Ruth credited him with teaching him how to “throw, catch, and hit properly.” Matthias took the young Ruth under his wing and routinely demonstrated his best method for hitting by smashing balls 350 feet. Ruth fell in love with hitting the ball and came to love the man showing him how to do it. Ruth later said of Matthias that he was “the father I needed” and called him the “greatest man I have ever known.” As Ruth’s love of the game grew deeper, so did his skill, and it would not be long before the baseball world took notice. 

In 1914, more than a decade after George had entered St. Mary’s, the manager-turned-owner of the Minor League Baltimore Orioles (no connection to the modern Major League Baseball club) Jack Dunn arrived at the school looking for a meeting with Ruth. He had never seen the young man play before, however Ruth’s reputation had by this stage preceded him. A star pitcher who could also play any position in the field, Ruth’s game had made him a high school legend, and his now 6-foot, 183 pound stature fit the profile of player that Dunn was looking for. Dunn had to sign him. Dunn offered Ruth a contract that was accepted without hesitation, and reportedly Ruth’s teammates and the assembly of students that had come with Ruth to the school office on his way to the meeting simultaneously lamented “there goes our ball club.” 

St Mary’s loss was the Orioles’ gain. Ruth and the Orioles headed to Fayetteville, North Carolina for spring training and immediately made his presence known. Writers marveled at both his power and speed during an interleague game in which he knocked a shot to right field and completed an inside the park home run before the ball could be fielded. Baltimore Sun sportswriter Jesse Linthicum noted in a 1948 article that he overheard Dunn say after the game that “This baby will never get away from me.” George had become ‘Babe,’ and had truly arrived.

Ruth showed why Dunn thought so highly of him. Starting the season as a lefty shortstop, Ruth was quickly called on to display his pitching talents and did not disappoint. Indeed, The Athletics said that he was “one of the best youngsters they had seen in a long time.” 

However, as Ruth ascended, the Orioles faced financial trouble. A new Major League club had taken up residence and was eroding the Orioles’ fanbase, and it eventually became clear that Dunn would have to dissolve the team. Multiple teams were interested but would not be able to produce a sum worthy of Ruth’s raw talent and potential. Then there was the Boston Red Sox.

Boston sent a scout, Patsy Donovan, to Baltimore to watch Ruth play and Donovan was suitably impressed. After recommending him, Boston’s owner Joseph Lannin met Dunn in Washington after the Red Sox played there. Three days later, a deal was finalized, sending Ruth and two other Orioles to the Red Sox in exchange for $25,000. 

The Red Sox wasted no time putting their new signing to work, with player/manager Bill Carrigan slating Ruth to start as a pitcher on his first day in Boston before rooming with him to show him the ropes. Ruth would not be given much of a chance to bat for the rest of the season, as Carrigan worked to iron out the kinks of a young pitcher, such as his tell for a curveball (he left his tongue hanging out every time he threw it). Fittingly, the first major league side to witness Babe’s hitting prowess would be the club that would eventually make him a legend.

On May 6, 1915, the Red Sox traveled to the Polo Grounds in New York to take on the freshly renamed New York Yankees. Ruth was set to pitch but was also called on to hit. In only his 18th Major League at bat, Ruth laced Yankees pitcher Jack Warhop’s third inning pitch into right field for his first career home run to the shock of the approximately 8,000 in attendance. In the heart of the dead-ball era, such power from the starting pitcher was almost unheard of. Ruth was just getting started. 

Ruth and the Red Sox stormed to three World Series victories in four seasons, and Ruth became one of the premier stars of the majors. He amassed an 80-41 record and was a perfect 3-0 in World Series games, setting the record for consecutive scoreless innings in the series that stood for over half a century. Ruth and the Red Sox seemed destined to dominate for years to come, however a storm was on the horizon. 

In January 1919 Ruth was at the height of his powers and sought to capitalize: he wanted to be paid like the star he had become and perhaps even beyond. He demanded a new contract and he demanded that his salary more than double from $7,000 to $15,000 per year, a princely sum currently only paid to all-timer Ty Cobb. To boot, he also sought to move to the outfield full-time, saying he would offer more playing every day there than playing once every four on the mound. Boston owner, now Harry Frazee, scoffed and Ruth retaliated by holding out and missing the team ship to Florida for spring training. Recognizing an impasse, both sides eventually agreed to terms of $10,000 per year. Ruth immediately set out to show that he was worth more. 

While still maintaining an important part of the pitching rotation (he registered 14 decisions with a 9-5 record), Ruth also clobbered a record 29 home runs in the season. The writing was on the wall for Harry Frazee, who was asset rich but cash poor, yet to fully see the return from his latest Broadway hit My Lady Friends.’ Frazee agreed to sell Ruth’s rights to the Yankees for about $110,000 in what has become one of the most infamous transactions in sports history. Babe Ruth was now a Yankee.

Babe took to the Big Apple as a fish takes to water. Now a full-time outfielder, Ruth smacked an otherworldly 54 home runs, annihilating his record from just the year before. The star drove incredible interest toward the Yankees, who at the time were renting space at the Polo Grounds owned by the National League New York Giants. Their landlords informed them that they would need to look for new space as soon as possible. It did not take long.

The Yankees, bolstered by the increased gate receipts from the record-breaking Ruth, acquired 10 acres directly across the East River from the Polo Grounds and began constructing a stadium that would come to be known as “The House that Ruth built.” Construction would be completed before opening day of the 1923 season, by which time Ruth had broken his own record again by recording 59 homers in the 1922 season. 

The 1923 season was in many ways the stuff of storybooks for Ruth and the Yankees. Fittingly, the Yankees’ first opponent in ‘The House that Ruth built’ was none other than his former club the Boston Red Sox. On Opening Day, Ruth knocked in a three-run homer en route to a 4-1 victory after hanging up the Yankee’s 1922 pennant.That same year, Ruth would go on to lead the Yankees to their first ever World Series victory, defeating the New York Giants four games to two 

Perhaps the pinnacle of Ruth’s time with the Yankees was the 1927 season. By now, fellow Yankees legend Lou Gehrig had joined him along with several others to form “Murderer’s Row,” a lineup that many consider to be the best offensive lineup ever assembled. Ruth broke his own record again, registering a career best 60 knocks, and the Yankees became the first team ever to spend precisely zero days anywhere other than in first place. They cruised to 110 wins and their second World Series title, a 4-0 sweep against the Pittsburgh Pirates

Ruth went on to win two more World Series with the Bronx Bombers before briefly returning to Boston with the Braves and then hanging it up. When all was said and done, he donned seven World Series wins and had totaled a gargantuan 714 home runs, becoming the first in the majors to achieve such a feat and setting a total that would not be equaled for nearly 40 years. Sadly, Ruth would pass away aged just 53 in 1948 due to nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a form of cancer that targets tissue connecting the back of the nose and mouth. His legacy not only in baseball but in popular culture is undeniable. The Yankees would go on to win 26 World Series in "The House that Ruth Built” and retired his number. Ruth was a member of the inaugural class of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. “Giving it the old college try,” a phrase attributed to him, became part of the lexicon as did “calling your shot,” which took on new meaning for many after a semi-mythical moment where Ruth is said to have pointed to the area of the outfield where he would proceed to launch his soon-to-come home run against the Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series. Babe Ruth’s name became synonymous with elite skill. Before Michael Jordan’s name became the go-to for alluding to someone’s greatness in a chosen field, Babe Ruth’s name was often invoked; Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf even said that Jordan was the Babe Ruth of basketball in 1999. America’s pastime and American culture alike owe a great deal to the Sultan of Swat.