Babe Ruth Yankees owners quickly pursued the purchase. Frazee sold the rights to Babe Ruth for $100,000, the largest sum ever paid for a baseball player. The deal also involved a $350,000 loan from Ruppert to Frazee, secured by a mortgage on Fenway Park. Once it was agreed, Frazee informed Barrow, who, stunned, told the owner that he was getting the worse end of the bargain. Cynics have suggested that Barrow may have played a larger role in the Ruth sale, as less than a year after, he became the Yankee general manager, and in the following years made a number of
Babe Ruth legal difficulties to be straightened out as Ruth was supposed to remain at the school until he turned 21. The train journey to spring training in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in early March was likely Ruth's first outside the Baltimore area. The rookie ballplayer was the subject of various pranks by the veterans, who were probably also the source of his famous nickname. There are various accounts of how Ruth came to be called Babe, but most center on his being referred to as "Dunnie's babe" or a variant. "Babe" was at that time a common nickname in baseball, with perhaps