Babe Ruth’s First Printed Appearance in a Game Program, July 1914

This is a game program from Babe Ruth’s second game, the game depicted on the real photo postcard of Ruth in this collection. This is the first appearance of Ruth’s name in a Major League program.

The program shown above for was issued for the Tigers series at Fenway Park during which Ruth pitched his second Major League game on July 16, 1914. Ruth appears as player “171” which would appear on the Fenway scoreboard under “P” when he was on the mound. Programs were issued for each series, not each game. Ruth had just been called up July 9th and was not listed in the printed program for the Cleveland series in which he appeared in his first game two day later on July 11^th as the programs were likely already printed when he was called up. A copy of the 1^st game program, without Ruth’s name preprinted, sold in a Lelands auction in 2017 for over $61,000 with Ruth’s name only penciled in on the scorecard by a spectator. By the next week for the series against the Tigers for his second game he was listed in the printed socrecard area as “171 Ruth” as shown further below. This second game program marks his first published appearance in a Major League piece of memorabilia.

Detroit played in three series in Boston at Fenway in 1914; May, July and August. Copies of programs for all three series are shown below. Based on the players lsited, and knowing the transactions made in 1914 by Boston, we can definitevly identify which program was used for each series. The May one does not list Egan, Shore or Ruth for Boston as they were called up from the minor league Baltimore team on July 9, 1914. The July 1914 program lists as the last three players the recently added “171 Ruth”, “223 Shore” and “231 Egan”. The August 1914 program shows a blank “171” spot, as Ruth had been sent back to the minors by that time, and Yerkes, Johnson, Egan, Coumbe who were traded or released have been deleted from the scorecard list and Hoblitzell and Gregg who were acquired have been added to the list. Thus it is definitive that this program is from Ruth’s second ML game, and the first program in which his name is actually printed.

May 1914 Detroit at Boston scorecard