Captain C
As the 1920 season began, baseball was reeling from the emerging Black Sox scandal, 8 members of the Chicago White Sox having taking money from gamblers (led by Arnold Rothstein) to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. With public confidence in the game and its integrity flagging, baseball needed a hero. And it got one, in spades. One of the great young lefty pitchers of the teens, one who had led the Red Sox to three World Series titles in 4 years, had been converted to a right fielder due to his even more prodigious hitting talent.
Then, after the 1919 season, the owner of the Red Sox sold this player to the Yankees for $100,000 (the highest total at the time), where he became one of the greatest sluggers the game has ever known. I am referring to, of course, Babe Ruth, who was not only one of the greatest players of all time, but was one of the first modern media sensations, coming along right as radio and modern advertising and marketing began their ascent. This set is devoted to the Babe, one of the two most important players in MLB history (the other being Jackie Robinson).
Before Babe Ruth was baseball’s first great slugger, he was one of the top young left-handed pitchers in the game, and had he continued along this path without injury, would likely have wound up in the Hall of Fame for his pitching talents. He helped pitch the Red Sox to 3 World Series in 4 years, as one of their aces (though by 1918 he was also playing outfield to get his excellent bat into the lineup more often). He wound up with a 94-46 record and a 2.28 ERA to go with all of his hitting records
