Playing the Field: Babe’s jersey, Lawrence Taylor’s ring

Ever wanted to smell the sweat of a 92-year-old jersey worn by the greatest baseball player of all-time? Of course you do.

Now pony up the $4,415,658.

Yes, Babe Ruth’s game-worn jersey from 1920 sold for a record $4.4 million (and change) recently. It set the record for the most expensive piece of sports memorabilia ever. That is just 44 times more than it cost the Yankees to buy Ruth himself from Boston in 1919. For $4.4 million you could afford the 2012 salaries of Austin Jackson ($500,000), Alexi Ogando ($498,000), Josh Reddick ($485,000), Jesus Montero ($487,000), Mark Trumbo ($500,000), Jeremy Hellickson ($490,000), Kyle Drabek ($480,000) and Neftali Feliz ($502,000) combined. And still have almost a half million left to sign some draft picks.

We don’t know who made the exorbitant bid, but you’ve gotta imagine the guy who bid $4,415,657 was pretty bummed.

Just a few thousand followers to go

Speaking of sports memorabilia, Giants legend Lawrence Taylor’s Super Bowl XXV ring was up for auction yesterday as well. The final price of that item was $230,000 including commission. Apparently Taylor didn’t even know the ring was being auctioned off. He gave it to his son, T.J., and told him to do whatever he wanted with it. The winning bid was three times what it was expected to fetch.

Current Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora, who is new to Twitter, made the offer to buy the ring for Taylor if he could get 1 million followers by Saturday at 10 p.m. It was a valiant move. Problem was, he had under 50,000 followers when he made the offer.

Attn:All L.T, NYG, NFL FANS! If i get 1million followers, i will buy L.T’s ring back and give it to him. The 1,000,000th will give it to him

— Osi Umenyiora (@OsiUmenyiora) May 19, 2012

Unfortunately, Osi is a little unfamiliar with how long it takes to add followers (unless you’re Charlie Sheen having a mental breakdown). So he backed it down to 500,000.

Deadline is 10pm tonight for the auction for LT’S Ring! Im reducing it to 500,000!!!

— Osi Umenyiora (@OsiUmenyiora) May 19, 2012

Ten hours later, he conceded defeat. … Just 445,000 followers shy of his goal.

Good Morning people! Well i guess we didnt make it to 500k for LT. But i appreciate the people who tried. #respect# you can now unfollow me

— Osi Umenyiora (@OsiUmenyiora) May 20, 2012

For the record, about 3,000 people listened to his request and unfollowed him. No word on if LeSean McCoy was the winning bidder.

Taylor is one of the saddest figures in sports. He might have had more post-career issues than any other great player — mostly self-inflicted — but he’s still the greatest defensive player of all-time. Sit back and enjoy the good times.

Follow Metro New York Sports Editor Mark Osborne on Twitter @MetroNYSports. He had an autographed Jimmy Spencer drawing that likely would’ve fetched six figures as well.