The Pitcher Who Wore Babe Ruth's Hat

David Wells ignored rules by temperament and upbringing. He was raised in the Ocean Beach neighborhood of San Diego by his mother, Eugenia Ann Wells, a woman the Hell's Angels knew as "Attitude Annie." She had five children from four different men. Wells grew up believing his father, David Pritt, was dead. He didn't learn the truth until he was 22 years old, when he tracked Pritt down and started a relationship from scratch.

His mother's boyfriend was Crazy Charlie Mendez, a member of the San Diego chapter of the Hell's Angels. Mendez and the rest of the club would show up to Wells's Little League games in Ocean Beach, leather and denim in the bleachers alongside the other parents. They paid the kid a dollar for every strikeout and five dollars for a win. By the end of a good game, the bikers owed him a hundred dollars or more. He never worried about collecting. If anyone stiffed him, he told them he'd send his mother's boyfriend after them.

Wells was a left-handed pitcher at Point Loma High School, where he threw a perfect game his senior year. He was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the second round of the 1982 draft and spent five years in the minors before reaching the majors in 1987. Over 21 seasons with nine teams, he won 239 games, earned three All-Star selections, and collected two World Series rings, all while nursing an obsession with Babe Ruth.

Wells didn't just admire Ruth the way most baseball fans do, from a respectful distance, through statistics and grainy footage. Wells collected Ruth memorabilia, studied his history, and got a tattoo of Ruth on his arm. When the Yankees signed him as a free agent before the 1997 season, the first thing he did was ask for Ruth's retired number 3. The Yankees said no. Wells settled for 33, the closest he could get.

He started buying Ruth memorabilia at auction. He accumulated bats, balls, photographs, and documents. And at some point before the 1997 season, he purchased the centerpiece of his collection for $35,000. It was a cap that Ruth had worn in 1934, authenticated and documented. Wells brought it home and treated it like a sacred object.

For Wells, playing for the Yankees was a pilgrimage, a chance to walk the same hallways, stand on the same mound, and wear the same uniform as the man he had idolized since childhood. He was a self-described "baseball history geek," and Yankee Stadium was his museum.

The Yankees were playing the Cleveland Indians at Yankee Stadium on June 28, 1997. Wells was the starting pitcher. He had already decided what he was going to do.

He brought the Ruth cap to the clubhouse. He told manager Joe Torre he wanted to wear it during the game. Torre refused, pointing out that the cap violated MLB's uniform policy, and told Wells he would have to wear the same hat as everyone else.

Wells appeared to comply. During warmups, he wore his regulation Yankees cap. Torre watched him closely, and Wells knew he was being watched. He walked past Torre on his way to the bullpen and made a point of showing him the correct hat on his head.

Then he went back to his locker, took off the regulation cap, and put on Ruth's.

The plan required accomplices. Wells waited until catcher Jorge Posada and shortstop Derek Jeter were heading out to the field, then fell in behind them. The stadium music started. The crowd was on its feet. By the time anyone in the dugout noticed which hat Wells was wearing, he was already on the mound.

Torre didn't notice until Wells was already pitching. "I didn't know he had it on until he was out in the middle of the diamond," Torre told reporters after the game. "It wasn't the standard uniform."

Wells pitched the top of the first inning wearing a cap that Babe Ruth had worn 63 years earlier. He retired the Indians in order and later described the feeling as "very emotional and chilling," with goosebumps the entire inning.

When he came back to the dugout, Torre was waiting. "Take the hat off," Torre told him. "I told you not to wear it."

"Well," Wells said. "I wore it."

Wells went back out for the second inning wearing his regulation Yankees cap. He promptly surrendered four runs and watched a 3-0 lead evaporate. The Indians won 12-8. The hat had brought him one perfect inning. Without it, things fell apart.

Torre fined him $2,500 for the uniform violation. Wells paid it during the next homestand, delivering the money in the form of 2,500 one-dollar bills. The incident became one of the most talked-about moments of the 1997 season, not because of its significance to the game but because of what it revealed about Wells. Here was a grown man, a professional athlete making millions of dollars, who had spent $35,000 on an old hat and then risked a fine and a confrontation with his manager just to wear it on the mound for a single inning. It was ridiculous. It was also, in a way that baseball fans understood immediately, completely sincere.

Less than a year later, on May 17, 1998, Wells pitched a perfect game at Yankee Stadium against the Minnesota Twins. It was the 15th perfect game in major league history and the first at Yankee Stadium since Don Larsen's perfecto in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series. Larsen, like Wells, had attended Point Loma High School in San Diego. Wells later admitted in his autobiography, Perfect I'm Not, and in a 2001 interview on HBO's Real Sports, that he had pitched the game with what he described as a "raging, skull-rattling" hangover.

The 1998 Yankees went 114-48 in the regular season, the most wins in American League history at the time, and swept the World Series. Wells went 18-4 with a 3.49 ERA and finished third in Cy Young Award voting. He had arrived at the only place he ever wanted to be, wearing the uniform of the only team he ever wanted to play for, and he had pitched a perfect game on the same mound where Ruth had played.

Wells kept the Ruth cap for 15 years. In 2012, he consigned it to SCP Auctions, where it sold for $537,278.40. The hat's provenance now included not just Ruth but Wells himself, and the one-inning stunt at Yankee Stadium had become part of the artifact's story. Wells had paid $35,000 and a $2,500 fine. He walked away with more than half a million dollars.

Wells finished his career in 2007 with the Los Angeles Dodgers at the age of 44. He went back to San Diego to live with his wife, Nina, and their two sons. He kept his Ruth memorabilia collection. He got a broadcasting job with the YES Network. At Old-Timers' Day events at Yankee Stadium, he still put on the pinstripes and walked the field where he had once smuggled a dead man's hat past his own manager.

When asked about the hat years later, Wells was unapologetic. "I wore the hat and history is history," he said. He had stood on the mound at Yankee Stadium wearing a piece of Babe Ruth, and for one inning, the line between past and present had disappeared entirely. The fine was worth it. The fine was always going to be worth it.