An anonymous buyer shelled out a million bucks for the bat Babe Ruth used to hit his 500th home run 90 years ago. Bloomberg News reports that Ruth gave the bat to former Suffern, New York, mayor Jim Rice in the 1940s—and Rice’s family put it up for auction. It went for less than the $1.3 million that a collector paid in 2004 for the bat Ruth used to hit his first home run. Ruth was the first baseball player to hit 500 homers. The feat came in a game against the Cleveland Indians that his Yankees lost.
