Hall of Fame Major League Baseball Player and American legend who was nicknamed "The Great Bambino" and "The Sultan of Swat." He was a charter member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936. In 1927, he hit 60 home runs, a Major League record that was broken by Roger Maris of the Yankees 34 years later in 1961, although Maris had the advantage of 8 extra games. Ruth began his Major League Baseball (MLB) career with the Boston Red Sox in 1915 as a pitcher. In 1919, pitcher-outfielder Ruth hit 29 home runs. In 1920, Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth to the New York Yankees for $100,000 (which in those days was an astronomical sum of money) in what became known as "The Curse of the Bambino." The Babe was now a full-time outfielder and slugger, playing his home games at the Polo Grounds. The Yankees moved to the brand-new Yankee Stadium in 1923; the ballpark was known as "The House That Ruth Built." Babe hit the first home run in the new stadium. His hitting produced home runs at a record pace, from 54 in his second Yankee season in 1921 to the record 60 homers in 1927. He won 7 World Series championships, three of them with the Boston Red Sox and four with the New York Yankees. He hit the last three home runs of his career at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field. The popular belief that Babe Ruth was an orphan is not true. Ruth was born in 1895 in the Camden Yards section of Baltimore, Maryland. The site today is occupied by the new ballpark of the Orioles, "Camden Yards." At the age of 7, he was literally given away to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys. His custody was signed over to the operators of the facility, the Xaverian Brothers, a Catholic Order of Jesuits, because of his extremely incorrigible behavior. In 1946, he was diagnosed with throat cancer. Surgery and radiation treatments proved ineffective. He lost his battle for life at Memorial Hospital in August 1948. For two days, his body lay in state in the rotunda of Yankee Stadium. Hundreds of thousands of people stood in line to pay their respects. Ruth's Funeral Mass was conducted at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. He was then interred at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York. His second wife, Claire, was buried next to him upon her death in 1976.