Baseball Numbers On Their Backs

"Joe DiMaggio set the standard. Mickey Mantle continued the tradition, but Earle Combs was the first of the great Yankees center fielders."

"He (Babe Ruth) had such a beautiful swing, he even looked good striking out." - Mark Koenig

Retired No. - [edit] Sold to New York

Ruth in 1920, the year he joined the Yankees.On December 26, 1919, Frazee sold Ruth to the New York Yankees. Popular legend has it that Frazee sold Ruth and several other of his best players to finance a Broadway play, No, No, Nanette (which actually didn't debut until 1925). The truth is somewhat more nuanced.

After the 1919 season, Ruth demanded a raise to $20,000-double his previous salary. However, Frazee refused, and Ruth responded by letting it be known he wouldn't play until he got his raise. He'd actually jumped the team several times, including the last game of the 1919 season.

Frazee finally lost patience with Ruth, and decided to trade him. However, he was effectively limited to two trading partners--the Chicago White Sox and the then-moribund Yankees. The other five clubs rejected his deals out of hand under pressure from American League president Ban Johnson, who never liked Frazee and was actively trying to "Yank" the Red Sox out from under him. The White Sox offered Shoeless Joe Jackson and $60,000, but Yankees owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston offered an all-cash deal--$100,000.

Frazee, Ruppert and Huston quickly agreed to a deal. In exchange for Ruth, the Red Sox would get $125,000 in cash and three $25,000 notes payable every year at 6 percent interest. Ruppert and Huston also loaned Frazee $300,000, with the mortgage on Fenway Park as collateral. The deal was contingent on Ruth signing a new contract, which was quickly agreed to, and Ruth officially became property of the Yankees on December 26. The deal was announced ten days later.

In the January 6, 1920 edition of the Boston Globe, Frazee described the transaction:

“I should have preferred to take players in exchange for Ruth, but no club could have given me the equivalent in men without wrecking itself, and so the deal had to be made on a cash basis. No other club could afford to give me the amount the Yankees have paid for him, and I don’t mind saying I think they are taking a gamble. With this money the Boston club can now go into the market and buy other players and have a stronger and better team in all respects than we would have had if Ruth had remained with us.”
However, the January 6, 1920 New York Times was more prescient:

“The short right field wall at the Polo Grounds should prove an easy target for Ruth next season and, playing seventy-seven games at home, it would not be surprising if Ruth surpassed his home run record of twenty-nine circuit clouts next Summer.”

Retired No. - On April 18, 1923, when Yankee Stadium opened for the first time, Babe Ruth christened the new stadium with a home run. On the same afternoon at Columbia, pitcher Gehrig struck out seventeen Williams batters for a team record. However, Columbia lost the game. Only a handful of collegians were at South Field that day, but more significant was the presence of Yankee scout Paul Krichell, who had been trailing Gehrig for some time. However, it was not Gehrig’s pitching that particularly impressed him. Instead, it was Gehrig’s powerful left-handed hitting. During the time Krichell had been watching Gehrig, Gehrig had hit some of the longest home runs ever seen on various Eastern campuses. Within two months Gehrig had signed his name to a Yankee contract .

"He's (Bob Meusel) learning to say hello when it's time to say goodbye." - Frank Graham, Jr.

"They didn't get along. (Lou) Gehrig thought (Babe) Ruth was a big-mouth and Ruth thought Gehrig was cheap. They were both right." - Tony Lazzeri

Born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, Durocher joined the New York Yankees briefly in 1925 before rejoining the club in 1928 as a regular, if unspectacular, player. Babe Ruth, whom Durocher disliked intensely after Ruth accused Leo of stealing his watch, nicknamed him "The All-American Out."

Durocher was a favorite of Yankee manager Miller Huggins, who saw in him the seeds of a great manager – the competitiveness, the passion, the ego, the facility for remembering situations. Durocher's outspokenness did not endear him to Yankee ownership, however, and his habit of passing bad checks, to finance his expensive tastes in clothes and nightlife, annoyed Yankee general manager Ed Barrow.

(Grabowski, Bengough and Dickey shared the catching duties). THE NEXT 3, Johnny Grabowski was born on Sunday, January 7, 1900, in Ware, Massachusetts. Grabowski was 24 years old when he broke into the big leagues on July 11, 1924, with the Chicago White Sox.

"I think this stuff (his hair restoring ointment) works. Every time I use it, I get a headache. I think that means that hair is trying to break through." - Benny Bengough (1927)

Retired No. - "This boy (Bill Dickey) will be better than (Muddy) Ruel, better than (Wally) Schang, better than any of them." - Miller Huggins (Spring of 1929)