The distinguished sportswriter and baseball biographer Jane Leavy has a new book out on Babe Ruth. It’s called The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created. Leavy’s book is a New York Times best seller, just like her biographies of Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle.
Brian Lamb interviewed Leavy on his CSPAN program Sunday night. During the interview she told the interesting story of the legal battle between Babe Ruth and the makers of the Baby Ruth candy bar.
The candy, which is still made today, became a tremendous commercial success at the exact moment that George Herman “Babe” Ruth Jr. became the biggest superstar in baseball history. The timing was probably not a coincidence.
Otto Schnering—owner of the Curtiss Candy Company of Chicago—insisted that the candy’s name referred to former President Grover Cleveland’s daughter, Ruth, who was born in 1891. But the only thing that rang true about Schnering’s claim was that the Cleveland baby was known as “Baby Ruth” at the time of her birth. The rest of his story did not hold up.
A candy bar named for “Baby Ruth” Cleveland might have made some sense in 1891. But not in the late 1910s and early 1920s, a time when Ruth Cleveland—who tragically died of diphtheria at age 12—had long since faded into obscurity.
Tellingly, Schnering never quite got his story straight on when the company started using the Baby Ruth name. During legal proceedings in the early 1930s, he testified that he decided to change the name of the company’s Kandy Kake candy bar to “Baby Ruth” in 1919. But other records suggested 1921 was the actual year.
The difference was important. In 1919 Babe Ruth was an outstanding player for the Boston Red Sox but his fame did not extend beyond baseball circles. That changed forever in 1920, when he was traded to the New York Yankees and began the greatest decade of hitting in the sport’s history. By 1921 he was without question the most famous person in the country, apart, perhaps, from President Warren G. Harding. No candy bar introduced in 1921 with the name “Baby Ruth” could possibly refer to anyone other than the Yankees’ legendary right fielder. Thus, Schnering’s 1919 claim was most likely a transparent effort to create some distance between the candy bar’s name and Babe Ruth’s rise to fame.
But whatever the true origins of the candy’s name, sales of the “Baby Ruth” bar took off in the 1920s, as Ruth shattered home run records. Schnering was a marketing genius and knew a good thing when he saw it. The Baby Ruth bar was a cash cow of epic proportions. The Curtiss Candy Company, which generated $1 million per month from “Baby Ruth” sales, registered the “Baby Ruth” trademark in 1924. Babe Ruth himself only had a salary of $52,000 in 1924, and never made more than $80,000 in a single season.
Belatedly realizing how much money was being made off his name, Ruth came out with a candy bar of his own, named “Ruth’s Home Run.” A picture of Ruth adorned the candy bar’s wrapper, along with the words “Babe Ruth’s Own Candy.” In a further effort to certify the candy bar’s authenticity, the wrapping prominently featured the Hall of Fame hitter’s signature. As if that weren’t enough, the back of some of the wrappers contained the words: “CAUTION: Absolutely none genuine without the photograph and official signature of Babe Ruth himself.”
In response, the Curtiss Candy Company claimed that Ruth’s candy bar caused consumer confusion with the Baby Ruth bar. In 1931 the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals agreed, ruling in favor of Curtiss Candy. The judge held that it was apparent that “confusion is likely between [Curtiss Candy’s] mark, ‘Baby Ruth’ and [Babe Ruth’s] mark, ‘Ruth’s Home Run, George H. ‘Babe’ Ruth.’”
Ruth supposedly responded to his legal defeat by declaring, “Well, I ain’t eatin’ your damned candy bar anymore!” It’s unclear whether he meant Baby Ruth bars or his own version. In any case, it seems that after forsaking candy bars, he went back to his regular, home run-producing diet of hot dogs and beer, which he reportedly consumed in generous quantities.
You can see the whole interview with Leavy on the CSPAN website here. Besides discussing Ruth’s life, she tells revealing stories about Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle. I’ve always admired Koufax, even though he beat my Minnesota Twins in game seven of the 1965 World Series. Jane Leavy’s biography of Koufax is available here and her Mantle biography is available here.
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