Overstock.com taking bids on Babe Ruth's contract

Salt Lake-based Overstock.com auctions started taking bids Friday in a 10-day auction for the original glass plate negatives of Babe Ruth's first professional baseball contract with the Boston Red Sox.

Original paper copies typically were destroyed by baseball clubs decades ago, although the teams archived player contracts on the glass plate negatives. The Ruth contract from 1916 to 1917 spans four plates. He earned a $3,500 salary that year.

Seller Rick Steele of Mesa, Ariz., plans to donate half of the closing price to the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association, a group dealing with Lou Gehrig's disease.

Steele also is including a Red Sox team photo from 1918, the last year the Red Sox won the World Series before winning the championship in 2004, and a 1920 edition of New York newspaper The Sun announcing the sale of Ruth to the New York Yankees for $125,000.

Last fall, the auction site sold Barry Bonds' 700th home run ball for $804,129.