12 things you probably don’t know about Babe Ruth

The story of Ruth’s trade from the Red Sox to the Yankees on Dec. 26, 1919, is well known, the irony being that Red Sox owner Harry Frazee, a theater impressario, was impelled to make the deal to finance his New York-based production of “No, No, Nanette.” Boston’s decline thereafter has come to be known as “The Curse of the Bambino” as the team’s World Series drought lengthened until finally broken after 86 years in 2004. But how bad was the Red Sox demise while Ruth was still playing? Pretty awful. For the next 13 years they didn’t finish above .500, were cellar dwellers most of those years, and in 1932 trailed the champion Yankees by an amazing 64 games in the standings.