A Sultan of Swat on a Budget: Babe Ruth's 1945 New York State Income Tax Return

By 1945, Babe Ruth had been out of baseball for a decade, and this tax return shows exactly what retirement looked like for the man who'd once been the highest paid player in the sport. The document is filed under his full legal name, George H. "Babe" Ruth, from the apartment at 110 Riverside Drive in Manhattan where he and his wife Claire lived out his final years. The attached schedule breaks down a modest but telling list of income sources: a Colgate testimonial, a guest appearance on NBC, personal appearances arranged through Paul Bowser Enterprises and at the Polo Grounds courtesy of Esquire, an exhibition in Hartford, and a testimonial for Jockey Underwear, all of it the tail end of the endorsement machine that agent Christy Walsh had built around Ruth's name starting in the early 1920s. It's a far cry from his peak Yankees salary, but it's proof that even in retirement, Ruth's celebrity still had real commercial value.

What makes the return worth pausing on is what it reveals beyond the dollar figures. Ruth reports contributions to the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, and various churches totaling $557, a nod to the charity work that quietly filled much of his post-playing life, and lists his wife Claire's name and their shared address under the marital exemption section, a small domestic detail from a marriage that lasted until his death in 1948. Total tax due for the year came to just $97.96, a number that says as much about the postwar tax code as it does about Ruth's finances. Documents like this are rare simply because so few of Ruth's personal financial records survive at all, and this one captures him not as the larger than life figure on a baseball card, but as a private citizen managing testimonials, charitable giving, and a household budget in the final years of his life.