What Goes Around

About a year ago, when shortstop Derek Jeter passed Babe Ruth on the Yankees all-time hits list, the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum forwarded a request through the Yanks’ public relations office asking that Jeter consider donating something from that historic at bat that would forever link he and the Babe together.

Within a week’s time, an overnight parcel arrived at the Birthplace, and in it was Derek’s response to our appeal: his batting gloves from the at-bat…donated! This, from a guy we had never met, but who understood, I think, just how important sports heritage is, especially in the game of baseball, whose heavy tendency to compare present to past sets it apart from any other sport. That is why our museum can easily interpret the connection between Ruth and Jeter through those batting gloves.

With that said, it seemed appropriate that when Jeter smacked his historic 3,000^th hit for a home run at Yankee Stadium last Saturday, the young fan who caught it opted to return the ball to the man who hit it. The 23-year-old and the star shortstop had something in common…the corny notion that the ball has more value as a heritage memento than as a collectible worth X amount of dollars.

The kid could have sold the ball for half a million, paid off his college bills, and had a nice nest egg. But his altruistic sense and his love for the game told him to do the right thing, and he did…no questions asked. The ball needed to be returned to the man to whom it meant the most, the man who, one year earlier, gave away his valued batting gloves to a sports museum in Baltimore, no questions asked.

What goes around…comes around.

See you out there.

Mike Gibbons is the executive director for the Babe Ruth Birthplace Foundation, Inc. 

Sports Treasures in Your Attic

This Saturday, June 4, our Sports Legends Museum plays host to the sports heritage version of the Great American Antique Road Show, as Grey Flannel Auctions out of New York comes to town for a full day of free appraisals of sports treasures from your attic, study or basement. That's right, we are offering a free chance for you to once-and-for-all find out how much your great-granddaddy's Shoeless Joe Jackson autographed ball is really worth...and, just as importantly, whether it is authentic.

I have been in the business of interpreting local sports history through memorabilia for the past thirty years, and over that period the value of keepsakes has transformed from items fans collected as personal mementoes of their favorite player or significant games or events they attended to commodities valued first and foremost for their financial worth.

In 1981 the average, not historically significant, Babe Ruth autographed ball went for about $100, give or take. If you had one, that meant you either got it in a first-hand encounter with the great Bambino, or someone from your family got it and passed it to the next generation. By the early nineties that same Ruth ball was going for more than $1,000. Today, its value has increased tenfold, or more.

I expect there is a bad side and a good side to this dramatic collectibles transformation. The bad being that we, as sports fans, have fully pushed away from the original intent of securing memorabilia as personal keepsakes. The good is that that old ball or glove or jersey or photo in the moldy box in your parents' basement, which for years resided there in meaningless obscurity, might now take on a whole new meaning in terms of cash value.

Stop by Legends on Saturday and bring your old sports stuff by for a professional looksee. Grey Flannel will help you determine just what you might have...for free!

See you out there,

Mike Gibbons

Mike Gibbons is the executive director for the Babe Ruth Birthplace Foundation, Inc.

Babe Ruth Was More Than a Yankee!

One of the great challenges our institution faces is luring Baltimoreans to the Babe Ruth Birthplace. Ask them why they haven’t visited 216 Emory Street, “just a long fly ball from Camden Yards,” and they respond simply: Babe Ruth was a Yankee! And, indeed, for most baseball fans, local, national and international, Ruth was and remains the iconic pinstripe.

But that should not stop home town visitors from flocking to his Birthplace. Here’s why.

George Herman ‘Babe’ Ruth was born in southwest Baltimore, on the verge dividing Pigtown and Camden Yards, in 1895. He was raised on hardscrabble streets by hardworking parents who were so busy running their family saloon that they were forced to send their son to St. Mary’s Industrial School for a heavy dose of discipline, religion…and baseball.

Babe Ruth’s rags to riches story was emblematic of the turn-of-the-century Baltimore environment from which he sprouted. He was a tough kid from a tough town, but also from a community that cared enough to raise him right and let his extraordinary skills develop.

And keep this in mind. Babe Ruth, the Yankee, was discovered by Jack Dunn, owner and manager of the International League Baltimore Orioles, in 1913. Dunn signed Ruth to his first pro contract in 1914, and agreed to serve as the boy’s legal guardian to boot. That led to the ‘phenom from Pigtown’ being referred to as “Jack Dunn’s Baby” in spring training that year, which, a couple of months later, had shortened to “Babe.”

Please, Baltimore, be proud that the greatest ballplayer of all time and baseball’s greatest star is one of your own, and an Oriole to boot! Without his Baltimore beginnings, there would have been no New York end! Celebrate Babe Ruth, our most famous native son.

Mike Gibbons is the executive director for the Babe Ruth Birthplace Foundation, Inc.