A rare photo of Babe Ruth’s first appearance with the Baltimore Orioles will be presented for sale at Leland’s 2024 Fall Classic Auction and could go for more than $200,000.
When most people think of The Great Bambino, images of him in Yankees pinstripes often come to mind. Whether it’s chumming it with Lou Gehrig or swinging a bat before a roaring crowd, Babe Ruth is most notably associated with his time in New York between 1920 and 1934. But years before then, and even before he played with the Boston Red Sox, who notoriously traded him to the Yankees and “cursed” themselves for a generation, Babe Ruth played for the minor league (at the time) Baltimore Orioles.
Very few images of Ruth exist from 1914, but one photograph in Leland’s 2024 Fall Classic Auction captures a 19-year-old Babe Ruth with his teammates, and experts believe the photo could sell for more than $200,000.
In the photo, Ruth is posing alongside the rest of his team in front of the backstop; standing on the end and leaning on one of his teammates. Ruth only played in Baltimore for three months before moving up to the Boston Red Sox, and at the time he was making $100 a week as a ballplayer.
Despite the photo itself having a torn corner and other signs of a century’s worth of aging, it’s undeniably a cool piece of history. Oft-regarded as one of the greatest of all time, Ruth memorabilia tends to sell incredibly high at collectors’ auctions. According to RobbReport, a 1914 card of Ruth on the Orioles from the same year the photo was taken went for $7.2 million at auction. Earlier this year, the jersey Ruth wore during his famous “called shot” sold for $24 million.
This photo is back on auction after previously being sold in 2019 for $190,373. Prior to that, the image was held in a private collection after it originally emerged publicly in the 1990s.
It’s hard to deny the impressive piece of sports history that is captured in the photo. And as the saying goes, “How can you not be romantic about baseball?” The auction is currently live on Leland’s website, and runs until October 19th.
Image credits: Lelands
