A pair of sports legends originated in Fayetteville, N.C.

Fayetteville, N.C., pops up in the world of sports trivia for its role in the history of baseball and miniature golf.

Fayetteville is where a burly teenager named George Herman Ruth Jr. hit his first homerun as a professional baseball player in 1914…and earned the nickname “Babe.”

 

Babe Ruth

Additionally, Putt-Putt Golf was invented in Fayetteville in 1954 by Don Clayton, a local insurance agent, who played varsity football at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

 

Don Clayton

Back in 1914, Jack Dunn, owner manager of the Baltimore Orioles (a minor league team at the time), signed 19-year-old George Ruth out of Saint Mary’s Industrial School for Boys in Baltimore. The nuns had labeled the lad as a “hopeless incorrigible.” 

Dunn had to become Ruth’s legal guardian in order to take him out of the school to play baseball. 

On their way to spring training in Florida, the train stopped in Fayetteville, and the Orioles players departed for a brief layover. Their stay had been arranged by Fayetteville clothier Hyman Fleishman, a friend of Dunn’s. 

A cold rain prevented the team from training outdoors, according to Fayetteville historian Bruce Daws. So, arrangements were made to use Fayetteville’s famed armory “for indoor catching practice.” 

The team had booked rooms at the Lafayette Hotel, and “George Ruth was greatly amused by the hotel elevator,” Daws noted. “Ruth would spend his evenings riding up and down from floor to floor,” no doubt using part of his $100 signing bonus to bribe the elevator operator to let Ruth drive.

 

The older players took to referring to the rookie as “Dunn’s babe.” 

Skies were clear on March 7, 1914, so the Orioles players walked about a mile to the baseball diamond at the Cape Fear Fairgrounds for a seven-inning intrasquad game, Buzzards v. Sparrows. Ruth, a lefty, played shortstop for the Buzzards. 

The highlight of the game was a mammoth homerun by Ruth that landed either in a cornfield or a mill pond, depending on which newspaper you read. 

Daws said Rodger Pippen, a reporter for the Baltimore News-Post, used a tape measure to calculate “the ball had traveled more than 400 feet – an astonishing figure that prompted his skeptical editor to respond, ‘How many inches are there to a foot in North Carolina ballparks?’” 

Ruth described the home run saying, “Boy, he threw that pitch right where I was swinging.” The Buzzards won, 15-9. 

Babe Ruth became a major leaguer in July 1914, when he was plucked from the Orioles’ organization by the Boston Red Sox. Ruth blossomed as both a pitcher and hitter. On the days he didn’t pitch, he played in the outfield. 

Ruth was sold to the New York Yankees in 1919, ushering in the infamous “curse” on the Red Sox franchise that would haunt Boston for 85 years. It was finally broken when the Boston won the World Series in 2004. Whew.

 

In 1929, the Yankees became the first club in professional baseball to sew numbers on the back of their players’ jerseys, thinking that fans could recognize players more easily that way. 

Initially, players were given numbers based on their place in the batting order. Babe Ruth batted third, so he wore No. 3. Check out the 1929 Yankees roster online to learn who wore other single-digit numbers on that New York squad. 

In contrast, Putt-Putt golfers have always been able to select the color of their ball…and set the tee-off lineup.