The original glass plate negatives of Babe Ruth's first professional baseball contract with the Boston Red Sox will go up for auction tomorrow, March 18th, on Overstock.com Auctions at 3:00 pm Eastern time. Detailed in the contract are Ruth's $3,500 annual salary and his signature using his formal name, George H. Ruth, Jr. The seller is Rick Steele, an Internet entrepreneur, lifelong baseball fan and expert sports memorabilia collector. Steele plans to donate 50 percent of the auction's closing price to The Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Association, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

The 10-day auction is scheduled to close at 3:00 pm Eastern time on Monday, March 28th. To prevent fraudulent bidding, Steele elected to use Overstock.com Auctions' Pay-to-Play service, which requires interested buyers to make a down payment of $1,000 when placing a bid over $10,000.

"Given the current state of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, the timing of this auction could not be better," said Holly MacDonald-Korth, Overstock Auctions Vice President. "Collectors looking to sell high-value items are drawn to Overstock.com Auctions because of our low 1% closing fee on items over $1,000 and our Pay-to-Play service." Parties interested in auctioning premier items should contact: bigtimeauctions@overstock.com.

http://auctions.overstock.com