Babe Ruth hit his first home run in North Carolina and he may have gotten his nickname here as well.

George Herman "Babe" Ruth was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1895. In 1914 he signed a baseball contract with the Baltimore Orioles. Way back then, the Orioles were a minor league team in the International League. In March 1914 the team held spring training in Fayetteville< North Carolina

Ruth was in Fayetteville for only about a month, but he always remembered it. It was the first time he had ever been out of Baltimore. Ruth later wrote about the fun he had riding the elevators in his hotel. According to one story, the young and inexperienced Ruth didn't know what to do on his own in Fayetteville, and so he followed the team's manager and owner, Jack Dunn. One of the team members said, "There goes Dunn's new babe," and the name stuck.

On March 7, 1914, Ruth played in his first Orioles game. The members of the team were divided into two sides, the Buzzards and the Sparrows. Ruth was a Buzzard. He hit his first home run. It was the longest home run the crowd of spectators had ever seen. "I hit it as I hit all the others, by taking a good gander at the pitch as it came up to the plate, twisting my body into a backswing, and then hitting it as hard as I could swing," said Ruth. The Buzzards won the game 15 to 9.