A fascinating photograph from May 28, 1924, captures baseball legend Babe Ruth trading his New York Yankees pinstripes for the wool uniform of the New York National Guard. Though he had formally enlisted as a private in the 104th Field Artillery during a highly publicized recruiting drive in Times Square days earlier, New York supply depots initially could not find a standard uniform large enough to fit the slugger’s imposing 6’2″, 215-pound frame. When the Yankees traveled to Washington, D.C., to play a doubleheader against the Senators, Ruth went directly to the U.S. War Department, where the Quartermaster General’s office successfully outfitted him from their extra-large stocks. Taken right in the nation’s capital, the iconic image of the home run king standing in formation—and later saluting World War I General John J. Pershing—marked a massive public relations triumph that brilliantly blended the worlds of American sports culture and peacetime civic duty.
