in short
A jersey worn by baseball legend Babe Ruth is going up for auction later this month and could fetch more than double the record price for any piece of sports memorabilia.
Ruth, a New York Yankee player, hit two home runs in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, a “Called Shot” game.
What's next?
The auction for his game-worn jersey is scheduled to close between August 23rd and 25th.
A New York Yankees uniform worn by baseball legend Babe Ruth will be auctioned in late August and could fetch more than $30 million, according to Chris Ivey, director of sports auctions at Heritage Auctions.
Ruth wore the jersey in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, a game remembered as a “Called Shot.”
The ball was last auctioned 19 years ago, selling for just under $1 million, and has since been photo-matched to two games in which Ruth hit home runs, including the one in which he pointed to the next ball after two strikes and then smashed it over the center field fence.
“We know that in 1932, when Babe Ruth was facing (Chicago Cubs pitcher) Charlie Root in Game 3, he pointed his finger, but we don't know if he was pointing at the pitcher, the Cubs players in the dugout or directing a shot,” Ivey said.
“But the mystery is why we're still talking about it nearly 100 years later. And what we do know is that this is the shirt, the jersey, that Babe Ruth wore that day.”
“If this were a work of art, it would be like buying the Mona Lisa. As we all know, the Mona Lisa is currently unavailable, but fortunately for sports collectors, this one is available.
“The auction estimate is over $30 million and is currently sitting at around $17 million ($25.8 million). There are about 12 days left in the auction, so we could see some spectacular results towards the end.”
Ruth is widely considered to be the greatest player in baseball history and was one of five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936.
He hit 714 career home runs, a record that stood for decades until it was surpassed by Hank Aaron in 1974.
Babe Ruth hit two home runs in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series in Chicago, one of which became known as the “Called Shot” home run. (Getty Images: B. Bennett)
The most expensive item of sports memorabilia ever sold was a baseball item: a mint-condition baseball card of Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle, which sold for $12.6 million in August 2022.
The Chicago Bulls jersey worn by NBA legend Michael Jordan in Game 1 of the 1998 NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz sold for $10.1 million (approximately $15.3 million) at Sotheby's in September 2022.
The “Hand of God” jersey worn by Argentina soccer legend Maradona in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England, in which he used his hand to deflect the ball into the net without the referee's knowledge, was sold by the same auction house for 7.1 million pounds (about $13.8 million) in 2022.
And the original Olympic Declaration, written by International Olympic Committee co-founder Pierre de Coubertin in 1892 and laying out the rationale for reinstating the Olympics in modern times, was sold in 2019 for $12.8 million.
Ernestine Miller and Kevin Baker, authors of books about baseball and Babe Ruth, stopped by the auction house to look at the shirt.
“This is a big deal for a lot of reasons,” Miller said. “First of all, no one in the history of sports has accomplished anything like Babe Ruth.
“And what he's done for baseball is discussed and compared every day across our country, across the United States and around the world.”
“One of the greatest games in the history of American baseball, and in the history of American sports, where players actually committed to doing something and they did it,” Baker said.
The final days of the auction are scheduled for August 23rd to 25th.
Reuters/ABC
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