For most baseball collectors, their “Holy Grail” is, and always will be, a single-signed Babe Ruth baseball. The reasons why are many and varied. There is the fact that he is the greatest player the game has ever produced. For before he started re-writing the record books with his epic home runs, Babe Ruth was renown as the best left-handed pitcher in the American League. No player has ever come close to matching this complete dominance over the two opposite facets of the game. His very life seemed to embody the American Spirit, rising from a juvenile delinquent on the Baltimore waterfront, shunned by his own family to become the most recognized man in North America, idolized by millions. It is only natural that the game’s greatest collectible is attributable to Babe Ruth.

The Babe’s well-practiced script, honed during his years at a Catholic orphanage, has the same swagger and boldness in which he lived his life. As was his custom and privilege as the game’s greatest star, Ruth signed his name on the ball’s sweet spot, the part of the ball from which he launched the home runs that made him famous. And that takes us to this stellar example of the hobby’s “Holy Grail.” Ruth’s unmistakable script appears boldly on the this slightly-toned ball’s sweet spot in strong black fountain pen. The absence of quotations around “Babe” points to this being signed from the late 1920s on. The ball itself has a “Boys League” stamp on the opposite sweet spot and “A CENTURY OF PROGRESS 1934” logo stamp on the panel directly above. Ruth’s signature on this type of ball of this era would indicate that this was signed towards that latter part of his storied career. An outstanding example of the hobby’s most iconic piece of memorabilia – a Babe Ruth single-signed ball dating to his playing days, displays beautifully and would be a welcomed addition to any serious collector’s collection. This ball comes with a LOA from PSA/DNA (AI02569) and a LOA from Beckett Authentication (AA09008) for Ruth’s signature.

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