The method Babe Ruth would use to stay cool in summer during baseball games was to wear chilled cabbage leaves underneath his cap. During Babe Ruth’s Major League Baseball (MLB) 1914 to 1926 career, professional baseball uniforms were wool, and the material made the players hot during summer games. To combat the heat, Babe Ruth would keep cabbage leaves in a cooler during games and wear one to two leaves under his cap. The chilled cabbage leaves would last a few innings before warming up and needing to be replaced with new ones. By 1940, MLB uniforms were no longer made of the uncomfortable wool material.
More about Babe Ruth:
- In 1930 during the Great Depression, Ruth’s salary was $80,000 US Dollars (USD), or the 2010s equivalent of $1.1 million USD.
- For his entire life, Ruth thought he was a year older than he actually was—birth records show his birthdate as 6 February 1895; however, he thought he was born on 7 February 1894.
- Ruth’s real name was George Herman Ruth, but the exact origins of his famous nickname are not conclusively known.