Say, if I hadn't been sick last summer, I'd have broken hell out of that home run record! Besides, the President gets a four-year contract. I'm only asking for three.^✱

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Say, if I hadn't been sick last summer, I'd have broken hell out of that home run record! Besides, the President gets a four-year contract. I'm only asking for three.^✱" in the context of "Speaking on January 7, 1930, when asked what made him think he was "worth more than the President of the United States," as quoted in "Yanks Refuse Ruth's Demand For $100,000; Star Asks That Figure On 3-Year Contract or $85,000 and No Exhibitions" by Richards Vidmer, in The New York Herald Tribune (January 8, 1930); also quoted in part—i.e. "The President gets a four-year contract; I'm only asking for three"—later that month in a syndicated story by NEA sportswriter Claire Burcky.

^✱Immediately following is the virtually ubiquitous but almost certainly apocryphal "I had a better year..." variation; in addition, see related contemporaneous quotes from Brian Bell, Herbert Hoover, Albert Keane, Reuters and Will Rogers in Quotes about Ruth.