Babe Ruth's Called Shot

Lore & Background

Before Game 3, the Yankees and the Cubs had shown growing animosity. One reason was Yankee manager Joe McCarthy's grudge against the Cubs, who had fired him in 1930 despite winning the National League pennant the previous season. Another concerned Cubs player Mark Koenig, who had been a big part of the Yankees' World Championships in 1927 and 1928 and had been traded to the Cubs mid-season in 1932. Using his mid-season arrival as the reason, the Cubs players voted that Koenig would only get half of his World Series bonus, which his old Yankee teammates saw as an insult. While warming up before Game 1, Ruth supposedly shouted to Koenig about how his Cub teammates were 'cheap bums', leading to shouting between the teams. The two teams continued to shout insults during Games 1 and 2, both won by the Yankees in New York. Before Game 3, Chicago fans had joined in, supposedly cursing and spitting on Ruth and his wife Claire as they arrived at Wrigley Field.

In Their Own Story

The air inside Wrigley Field was thick with smoke and skepticism as Babe Ruth stepped up to the plate in the third inning. The Chicago crowd jeered, their voices rising like a tidal wave against the Yankees' captain. With a slow, deliberate motion, Ruth raised his index finger, pointing past the pitcher's mound toward the distant center field fence. A hush fell over the stadium for a heartbeat before Charlie Root delivered the pitch. The crack of the bat echoed through the cold October night as the ball soared on a perfect arc, landing exactly where the legend had indicated.

Reader's Guide

Contemporary reports say the Cubs' players and fans mercilessly jeered Ruth throughout. Fans pelted him with lemons as he stood in left field and while at the plate. Earlier in the game, Ruth had already hit a home run, and also nearly made a shoestring-catch, the miss allowing the Cubs to tie the game; this led to even more heckling. With the score tied 4–4 in the fifth inning, he took strike one from pitcher Charlie Root. As the Cubs players heckled him and the fans hurled insults, he held up his hand pointing at either Root, the Cubs dugout, or center field. He took strike two, and then repeated this pointing gesture. It is unclear whether Ruth pointed to center field, to Root, to the Cubs' bench, or was just showing the strike count. In the 1990s, amateur filmmaker Matt Miller Kandle, Sr.'s film of the at-bat was discovered, but the film did not provide anything conclusive. In 2020, an audio clip was discovered from a radio show that originally aired on October 6, 1932, in which Lou Gehrig said that Ruth was indeed pointing toward the flagpole in center field. Root's next pitch was a curveball, and Ruth hit it to the deepest part of the centerfield near the flagpole. Estimates of the distance vary up to 490 feet. The ground distance to the center-field corner, somewhat right of straightaway center was 440 feet. The ball landed a little bit to the right of the 440 corners and farther back, apparently in the temporary seating in Sheffield Avenue behind the permanent interior bleacher seats. Calling the game over the radio, broadcaster Tom Manning shouted, 'The ball is going, going, going, high into the center-field stands ... and it is a home run!'. Ruth later described the hit as 'past the flagpole' which stood behind the scoreboard and the 440 corners. His powerful hit was aided by a strong carrying wind that day. Newsreel footage showed that Ruth was crowding the plate and nearly stepped forward out of the batter's box, inches away from the risk of being called out. The film shows that as he rounded first base, he looked toward the Cubs dugout and made a waving-off gesture with his left hand. As he approached third, he made another mocking gesture, a two-armed 'push' motion, toward the suddenly quiet Cubs bench. Many reports have claimed that he 'thumbed his nose' at the Cubs dugout, but the existing newsreel footage does not show that. The Associated P

Did You Know?

• On the day of the game, Joe Williams, a sports editor for the Scripps-Howard newspapers, wrote a headline evoking billiards terminology: 'RUTH CALLS SHOT AS HE PUTS HOME RUN NO. 2 IN SIDE POCKET.'
• At the time, Ruth did not clarify the matter, initially stating that he was merely pointing toward the Cubs' dugout to remind them that he still had one more strike.
• In his 1948 autobiography, Ruth provided an enhanced version of the story, stating that he had told his wife 'I'll belt one where it hurts them the most' and that the idea of calling his own shot then came to him.