History with ‘Hud’: Remembering Babe Ruth’s visit to Wilmington as MLB playoffs continue
WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — The 2023 Major League Baseball playoffs are well underway, featuring the top teams from the regular season squaring off to see who’s the best. While the nearest big league team is hundreds of miles from Wilmington, the Port City was visited by the most widely known figure in baseball history over a century ago.
George Herman Ruth – later known as Babe Ruth to the public – began his professional career with the Baltimore Orioles organization, which held their spring training games in Fayetteville during the early 1900s. Ruth, along with the rest of an Orioles minor league club, came to Wilmington by train in March of 1914 for an exhibition game — less than three weeks after a 19-year-old Ruth hit the first professional home run of his career in Fayetteville.
The Orioles took on the best team in the league at the time, the Philadelphia Athletics, at Sunset Park. A parade was held to welcome the two teams, with local leaders taking the teams on a tour of Wilmington, hoping they would choose the Port City as a future spring training spot.
The game began around 3:15 p.m. with nearly 2,000 people in attendance to see Hall of Fame manager Connie Mack and the defending world champion A’s take on the far lesser thought of Orioles club. Local papers called it the biggest game of baseball Wilmington had ever seen.
Seven future Hall of Famers took the field that day, including Ruth, who was far from the famous personality he would quickly become with the Red Sox and Yankees.
Philadelphia was on their way north from Florida for the start of the season, playing games such as this one to keep their skills sharp. Not having lost a game for two weeks, they were heavily favored.
Tickets to the game were sold at local restaurants, pharmacies, and cigar shops, with general admission costing 50 cents and grandstand seats going for a whopping 75 cents.
Babe Ruth received his first professional start of his career, having pitched several games prior in relief. His stellar pitching went a long way to helping the Orioles beat the Athletics, 6 to 2.
Just a few months after the exhibition game in Wilmington, Babe Ruth was sold to the Boston Red Sox where the famous Ruth stories began. But Wilmington residents would spend the next several years boasting about the time the Great Bambino came to their own backyard.
