Babe Ruth’s Called Shot: Myth or Reality?
It is one of the most famous moments in American sports history. October 1, 1932. Wrigley Field, Chicago. Game 3 of the 1932 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs. The Yankees lead the series 2-0, and the game is tied 4-4 in the fifth inning. Babe Ruth steps to the plate. The crowd, largely hostile to the Yankee star, heckles him mercilessly. Ruth points to the center-field bleachers. He then takes a Charlie Root pitch and hits a home run to almost exactly the spot he had pointed to. The Yankees win the game 7-5, then sweep the series 4-0.
Did Ruth really “call his shot”? For ninety years, sports fans, historians, and journalists have argued about the moment. The answer, as with most great sports myths, is more complicated than either the believers or the debunkers suggest.
The Setup: A Heated Series
The 1932 World Series was a battle of baseball’s two biggest brands. The Yankees were the defending American League champions and the team of the decade, featuring Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and the rest of the lineup that had won titles in 1927 and 1928. The Cubs were the National League’s best team, having won the NL pennant by four games, and they were playing in their home park, Wrigley Field, where they had not lost a World Series game since 1907.
The first two games of the series had been played in New York, and the Yankees had taken both, with a tense 12-6 win in Game 1 and an 8-1 rout in Game 2. The series shifted to Chicago for Game 3, with the Yankees needing only one more win to clinch. The Cubs, however, were fighting to make the most of their home-field advantage, and the Chicago crowd was determined to give the Yankees a hostile reception.
The At-Bat: What Reporters and Witnesses Said
The fifth-inning at-bat in question was Ruth’s second of the day. In his first at-bat, in the first inning, Ruth had struck out against Cubs pitcher Charlie Root. As he walked back to the dugout, he reportedly exchanged words with the Cubs bench — either with catcher Gabby Hartnett, or with the Cubs players generally, or with Root himself. The exact nature of the exchange is unclear, but it seems to have involved Ruth being mocked for striking out, and Ruth responding with characteristic bluster.
In the fifth inning, with the count 2-2 and the game tied 4-4, Ruth took a moment before the next pitch. The accounts of what happened next vary widely:
- The “called shot” version holds that Ruth pointed to the center-field bleachers, indicating where he intended to hit the next pitch. He then took a Root delivery and hit a home run to almost exactly that spot.
- A modified version holds that Ruth gestured toward the pitcher or the Cubs bench, perhaps waving off a comment, before hitting the home run.
- A skeptical version holds that Ruth made no such gesture, and that the entire story was invented by reporters who wanted a dramatic moment for their stories.
The Evidence For
The most influential early account of the Called Shot came from Joe E. Lewis, a comedian who was at the game. Lewis told the story repeatedly in nightclubs and on radio in the years after the event, and his version became the most widely circulated. The comedian told the story with a theatrical flair: Ruth, he said, had pointed to the bleachers with his bat, then with his hand, before taking the pitch.
Another early account came from Jimmy Cannon, then a young sportswriter for the New York American. Cannon reported that Ruth had made a gesture toward the bleachers before the home run, and his version has been repeated in countless books and articles since.
The most important early written account came from Tom Meany, a sportswriter for the New York Journal-American, who wrote a detailed column about the moment shortly after the game. Meany described Ruth as pointing to the bleachers, and he noted that the home run was hit to nearly the same spot. Meany’s account has been the most influential written version of the Called Shot.
The Evidence Against
The skeptical case is also strong. Several reporters who were at the game said that Ruth did not point to the bleachers. Joe Williams, a sportswriter for the New York World-Telegram, said he had a clear view of the at-bat and saw no such gesture. William Braucher, who covered the game for the Chicago Herald and Examiner, also expressed doubt about the gesture, though his initial story (in the next day’s paper) was the source of one of the earliest “called shot” reports.
Charlie Root himself, the pitcher who gave up the home run, denied the Called Shot story for the rest of his life. He insisted that Ruth had not pointed to the bleachers and that the story was invented by sportswriters looking for a dramatic moment. Root lived until 1970, and his denials were a feature of the Called Shot story for decades.
A more recent skeptic is Robert Creamer, whose 1974 biography of Babe Ruth argued that the gesture was probably real but that its precise meaning was ambiguous. Creamer suggested that Ruth might have been pointing at the pitcher, or at a specific defender, or at a heckler in the bleachers — not necessarily indicating where he intended to hit the ball.
The Modern Consensus
The scholarly consensus on the Called Shot has shifted over the decades but generally lands in a middle position. Most modern historians of baseball agree that:
- Ruth almost certainly made some kind of gesture before the home run, and that the gesture was probably directed at the Cubs bench or at Root himself.
- The gesture was probably not a clear “point to the bleachers” but rather a more ambiguous motion, perhaps a wave or a flick of the wrist.
- The story of the “Called Shot” as it is usually told — Ruth pointing, then hitting a home run to the exact spot — was embellished by reporters and by Ruth himself, who enjoyed telling and retelling the story in later years.
- The home run was real, the count was 2-2, and the moment was dramatic — but the precise choreography of Ruth’s gesture has been refined and amplified over the decades.
In short, Ruth probably did make a gesture, but the gesture has been mythologized into something more precise and intentional than it probably was. The Called Shot is a perfect case study in how American sports mythology is constructed: a real event, surrounded by ambiguity, transformed by repetition into a clear and dramatic story.
The Aftermath: A Yankees Sweep
Whatever the precise nature of Ruth’s gesture, the home run itself was decisive. It broke the 4-4 tie, and the Yankees went on to win Game 3 by a score of 7-5. They then won Game 4 the following day, sweeping the Cubs 4-0 in the series. The 1932 World Series was the Yankees’ fourth championship of the decade and the last great moment of Ruth’s career. The 1932 season was, in fact, Ruth’s last great one: he hit 41 home runs and batted .341, finishing second in the American League Most Valuable Player Award voting to Jimmie Foxx. (Ruth’s only AL MVP had come in 1923.) He was 37 years old, and the next several seasons would see a steady decline in his statistics. The Called Shot, whether or not the gesture was as precise as the legend suggests, was the last iconic Ruthian moment of the decade that Ruth had defined.
The Cultural Meaning of the Called Shot
The Called Shot has become one of the most famous moments in American sports because it captures something essential about Babe Ruth’s appeal: the sense of a man so supremely confident in his own abilities that he could announce his intentions and then carry them out. The image of Ruth pointing to the bleachers and then hitting a home run to almost exactly that spot is a perfect metaphor for the power of individual will, of a man dominating his circumstances through sheer talent and bravado.
The story has been told and retold in countless books, articles, documentaries, and films. It features prominently in “The Babe Ruth Story” (1948), a biographical film starring William Bendix, and in “The Sandlot” (1993), a coming-of-age film in which a group of boys re-enact the Called Shot in a sandlot game. It is one of the foundational myths of American baseball, and it illustrates how sports myths are made: not a single moment but a process of original event, contemporary reporting, subsequent retellings, artistic embellishments, skeptics’ arguments, and emerging consensus. Whether Ruth “really” pointed to the bleachers is less important than the fact that millions of Americans came to believe he did.