Babe Ruth's called shot was a home run hit by Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees against the Chicago Cubs in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, held on October 1, 1932, at Wrigley Field in Chicago. During his at-bat, Ruth made a pointing gesture before hitting the home run to deep center field. One of the reporters at the game wrote that Ruth had "called his shot", using terminology from billiards. The episode added to Ruth's superstardom and became a signature event of baseball's golden age.
Film of the event confirms that Ruth made a pointing gesture, but his intent remains unknown—whether he was promising a home run, or merely gesturing at fans or the Cubs in their dugout.
Background
Before Game 3, the Yankees and the Cubs had shown growing animosity towards one another. Various reasons have been given, with one being Yankee manager Joe McCarthy's grudge against the Cubs who had fired him in 1930, despite winning the National League pennant the previous season. The other 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 when they heard of it. While warming up before Game 1, Ruth supposedly shouted to Koenig about how his Cub teammates were "cheap bums", which led to the Cubs players shouting back at Ruth, at which point other Yankees players joined in.
The two teams continued to shout insults at one another from their respective dugouts during Games 1 and 2, both won by the Yankees in New York. Before Game 3, Chicago fans had joined in the furore, supposedly cursing and spitting on Ruth and his wife Claire as they arrived at Wrigley Field.
Event
Contemporary reports of the game say that the Cubs' players and fans were mercilessly jeering Ruth throughout. Fans pelted him with lemons as he stood in left field and while at the plate. He responded to the rough treatment verbally and with physical gestures.
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 from the Cubs players and fans. 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, available in MLB's 100 Years of the World Series, 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 (Rule 6.06a). 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 Press game report stated that he raised four fingers, signifying a home run, as he ran the bases.
Attending the game was Franklin D. Roosevelt, then a presidential candidate, as well as a 12-year-old boy named John Paul Stevens, a future associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. Roosevelt reportedly laughed while watching Ruth run the bases.
Root remained in the game but for only one more pitch, which the next batter, Lou Gehrig, hit into the right-field seats for his second home run of the day. The Yankees won the game 7–5. The next day, they defeated the Cubs 13–6, completing a four-game sweep of the World Series.
Origins of the called-shot story
On the day of the game, Joe Williams, a sports editor for the Scripps-Howard newspapers, wrote a headline for a late edition of the New York World-Telegram, evoking billiards terminology: "RUTH CALLS SHOT AS HE PUTS HOME RUN NO. 2 IN SIDE POCKET." Williams' summary of the story read: "In the fifth, with the Cubs riding him unmercifully from the bench, Ruth pointed to center and punched a screaming liner to a spot where no ball had been hit before."
The wide circulation of the Scripps-Howard newspapers most likely gave the story life, as many read Williams' article and assumed that it was accurate. Several days later, other stories appeared stating that Ruth had called his shot, a few written by reporters who were not even at the game. The story was likely to meet with acceptance among the public, who were aware of Ruth's many larger-than-life achievements and his well-publicized fulfilled promise to sick child Johnny Sylvester that he would hit a home run.
Some contemporary newspaper accounts from the day of the game, including that of writer Damon Runyon, mentioned that Ruth simply gestured toward the Cubs' vocal dugout inhabitants after each pitch with the current count: "He engaged in brisk repartee with the Cubs, and the fans. He made gestures with his hands in case his voice was not heard." Others, such as that of William McCullough of the Brooklyn Times-Union, intimated that Ruth may have indeed signaled a home-run gesture: "With the count 2 and 2, Ruth motioned to the Cubs' dugout that he was going to hit one out of the park, and when a low curve came floating down the alley, he swung with all his powerful body."
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. At one point very early on, he said, "It's in the papers, isn't it?". In an interview with Chicago sports reporter John Carmichael, Ruth said that he had not pointed to any particular spot, but that he just wanted to give the ball a good ride. Soon, however, the media-savvy Ruth was going along with the story that he had called his shot, and his subsequent versions over the years became more dramatic. He later stated that he had indeed pointed to where he intended to hit the ball. For one newsreel, he provided a voiceover for the called shot scene with the remarks, "Well, I looked out at center field and I pointed. I said, 'I'm gonna hit the next pitched ball right past the flagpole!' Well, the good Lord must have been with me." In his 1948 autobiography, he provided another enhanced version, by 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. Ruth then recounts the at-bat:
No member of either team was sorer than I was. I had seen nothing my first time at bat that came close to looking good to me, and that only made me more determined to do something about taking the wind out of the sails of the Chicago players and their fans. I mean the fans who had spit on Claire [Ruth's wife].
I came up in the fourth inning with Earle Combs on base ahead of me. My ears had been blistered so much before in my baseball career that I thought they had lost all feeling. But the blast that was turned on me by Cub players and some of the fans penetrated and cut deep. Some of the fans started throwing vegetables and fruit at me.
I stepped back out of the box, then stepped in. And while Root was getting ready to throw his first pitch, I pointed to the bleachers which rise out of deep center field. Root threw one right across the gut of the plate and I let it go. But before the umpire could call it a strike - which it was - I raised my right hand, stuck out one finger and yelled, "Strike one!"
The razzing was stepped up a notch.
Root got set and threw again - another hard one through the middle. And once again I stepped back and held up my right hand and bawled, "Strike two!" It was.
You should have heard those fans then. As for the Cub players they came out on the steps of their dugout and really let me have it.
I guess the smart thing for Charlie to have done on his third pitch would have been to waste one.
But he didn't, and for that I've sometimes thanked God.
While he was making up his mind to pitch to me I stepped back again and pointed my finger at those bleachers, which only caused the mob to howl that much more at me.
Root threw me a fast ball. If I had let it go, it would have been called a strike. But this was it. I swung from the ground with everything I had and as I hit the ball every muscle in my system, every sense I had, told me that I had never hit a better one, that as long as I lived nothing would ever feel as good as this.
I didn't have to look. But I did. That ball just went on and on and on and hit far up in the center-field bleachers in exactly the spot I had pointed to.
To me, it was the funniest, proudest moment I had ever had in baseball. I jogged down toward first base, rounded it, looked back at the Cub bench and suddenly got convulsed with laughter.
You should have seen those Cubs. As Combs said later, "There they were-all out on the top step and yelling their brains out - and then you connected and they watched it and then fell back as if they were being machine-gunned."
That home run - the most famous one I ever hit - did us some good. It was worth two runs, and we won that ball game, 7 to 5.
Ruth said that he was upset about the Cubs' insults during the series, and that he was especially upset that Chicago fans had spat upon his wife Claire. He said that not only had he deliberately pointed to center with two strikes, he had also pointed to center even before Root's first pitch.
Others helped perpetuate the story over the years. Tom Meany, who worked for Joe Williams at the time of the called shot, later wrote a popular but often embellished 1947 biography of Ruth. In the book, Meany wrote, "He pointed to center field. Some say it was merely as a gesture towards Root, others that he was just letting the Cubs bench know that he still had one big one left. Ruth himself has changed his version a couple of times... Whatever the intent of the gesture, the result was, as they say in Hollywood, slightly colossal."
Despite writing the article that may have begun the legend, over the ensuing years, Williams came to doubt the veracity of Ruth's called shot. Similarly, Ruth biographer Robert Creamer believed that, while in a way Ruth had called his shot with his words and gestures to the Cubs, he did not believe that Ruth specifically pointed to center field.
Nonetheless, the called shot further became etched as truth into the minds of thousands of people after the 1948 film The Babe Ruth Story, which starred William Bendix as Ruth. The film took its material from Ruth's autobiography, and presented the called shot as a true event. Two separate biographical films made in the 1990s also repeated this gesture in an unambiguous way, coupled with Ruth hitting the ball over the ivy-covered wall, which did not actually exist at Wrigley Field until five years later.
Eyewitness accounts
Eyewitness accounts were equally inconclusive and widely varied, with some of the opinions possibly skewed by partisanship: