10 times the player.
The “cursed” 1919 contract (pictured) that shipped Babe Ruth from Boston to the Bronx sold at auction Friday for a staggering $996,000.
The Babe himself only cost the Yanks $100,000 when on Dec. 26, 1919 the contract was signed by owners Harry Frazee of the Red Sox and Jacob Ruppert of Yankees.
Of course it cost the Red Sox a bit more, with Ruth they had won the World Series one year earlier. They wouldn’t taste a title again until last year, when “The Curse” was finally broken with their World Series victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.
In between, the Yankees won 26 championships while Boston suffered some of the most agonising defeats in baseball history. Ruth went on to become one of the most dominant and recognisable figures in all sports.
The five-page typed contract recorded the unprecedented deal blamed for dooming generations of Red Sox fans to heartbreak as victims of “The Curse of the Bambino.”