George Herman "Babe" Ruth, Jr. (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948) was an American baseball outfielder and pitcher who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1914 to 1935. Nicknamed "The Bambino" and "The Sultan of Swat", he began his career as a stellar left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, but achieved his greatest fame as a slugging outfielder for the New York Yankees. Ruth established many MLB batting (and some pitching) records, including career home runs (714), slugging percentage (.690), runs batted in (RBIs) (2,213), bases on balls (2,062), and on-base plus slugging (OPS) (1.164), some of which have been broken.[1] He was one of the first five inductees into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936.
At age seven, Ruth was sent to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory where he learned life lessons and baseball skills from Brother Matthias Boutlier, of the Christian Brothers, the school's disciplinarian and a capable baseball player. In 1914, Ruth was signed to play minor-league baseball for the Baltimore Orioles. Soon sold to the Red Sox, by 1916 he had built a reputation as an outstanding pitcher who sometimes hit long home runs, a feat unusual for any player in the pre-1920 dead-ball era. Although Ruth twice won 23 games in a season as a pitcher and was a member of three World Series championship teams with Boston, he wanted to play every day and was allowed to convert to an outfielder. He responded by breaking the MLB single-season home run record in 1919.
After that season, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee controversially sold Ruth to the Yankees. In his 15 years with New York, Ruth helped the Yankees win seven league championships and four World Series championships. His big swing led to escalating home run totals that not only drew fans to the ballpark and boosted the sport's popularity but also helped usher in the live-ball era of baseball, in which it evolved from a low-scoring game of strategy to a sport...