Baby Ruth Banned From The Yankee Clubhouse, and Other Baby Ruth Trivia

As I was pondering some of life's great questions, and using my great power of reasoning, that is truly a gift, I was temporarily stumped by the question, "When is a baby not a baby?"

I thought to myself; self, let me considered this carefully....

My aunt who is in her late 70's still calls my mother her "baby sister." Clearly my mother is my mother, yet she is still a baby. Interesting, right?

My two children are in college, clearly not in the neonatal stage of development anymore yet, when thinking upon them I still think of them as my two babies.

Further thought brought to mind an old lady in the market who despite the rule of "Seeing Eye Dogs ONLY" referred to the little critter in her basket as "her baby." Still, I'd have to admit, it was indeed somebody's baby. Human absolutely not, but baby still the same.

And that's when the idea truly hit me... a baby is not a baby when it is a candy bar!

One would never believe that this little tasty morsel could have such a sordid past, but believe me, upon investigation I found some controversial news. Allegedly, the Curtiss Candy Company named the candy bar after the daughter of President Grover Cleveland, Ruth Cleveland. This might all sound on the up and up to you but, the fact of the matter is that the release of the Baby Ruth candy bar was in 1920 almost 16 years after Ruth Cleveland had died and long after President Grover Cleveland had left the White House.

Ironically, 1920 was just when the fame of the legendary baseball player Babe Ruth, had started to skyrocket, and surprisingly, negotiations for a "candy" deal had failed.

Could this story possibly be a way to avoid paying Babe royalties for a candy bar named after him?

Thank goodness, for the Curtiss Candy Company, they didn't have investigative reporters like Geraldo Rivera back then to bust that little scam right open, now isn't it? In fact, the Babe himself tried to market a candy bar that would have been competition for the Baby Ruth but was shut down on grounds that the names were too close.

As if to add insult to injury, The Curtiss Company had an illuminated advertising sign for the Baby Ruth candy bar installed on the roof of one of the buildings across Sheffield Avenue.

This was the location where, in the 1932 Worlds Series, Babe Ruth, who played for the New York Yankees called his shot and his home run ball had landed. This sign remained in place for some four decades. You make the call!

The Sports industry is not the only place of controversy for the Baby Ruth. This candy bar has also graced, or should I say disgraced, the movie industry with its movie debut in Caddyshack.

Single handedly The Baby Ruth bar cleared a very crowded public swimming pool, causing mayhem to swimmers and sun bathers alike.

Mysteriously, after Nabisco had acquired The Curtiss Candy Company in 1981 the original recipe disappeared. The excuse was that no one at the old Curtiss factory "remembered" how to make it. Scientists had to come up with a new secret formula of chocolate-covered peanuts enclosed in a chewy nougat filling to fool the public into thinking that they were eating the original Baby Ruth.

The Baby Ruth candy secrets are now owned by Nestle.

Who would have ever guessed such a nutty little bar could be the cause of such controversy?

In New York the manager of the New York Yankees has banned the "Baby Ruth" and other candy and ice cream from the Yankee clubhouse in an effort to create a more healthy environment for his players. The Yankees have also asked that opposing teams remove the unhealthy culprits from the visitor's clubhouse before the team arrives. Nuts, dried fruit, and granola have replaced the criminal candy bars, to offer a more healthy route. Yankee players have resulted to "smuggling in" the banned items in the clubhouse.