DALLAS — Almost 90 years after he retired from baseball, Babe Ruth continues to smash his way into the history books. After a thrilling bidding war that lasted more than six hours, the New York Yankees jersey Babe Ruth wore when he called his shot to deep center field in game three of the 1932 World Series sold early Sunday morning at Heritage Auctions for $24.12 million to become the world’s most valuable sports collectible.
Ruth’s “Called Shot” jersey, the centerpiece of Heritage’s ongoing Summer Platinum Night Sports Auction, was recently photo-matched by several third parties, including Professional Sports Authenticator and MeiGray Authenticated. The match used two photos from Getty Images and a third from The Chicago Daily News showing Ruth, Lou Gehrig and manager Joe McCarthy in the Wrigley Field dugout on October 1, 1932.
Ruth held on to the jersey for years following his retirement and eventually gave it to a golfing friend in Florida in the 1940s. It remained with that lucky recipient’s daughter until the 1990s, when an early sports auction pioneer traveled to Florida to buy the jersey for a six-figure sum. The jersey was immediately sold privately to an unknown collector, who kept it in his collection until it was consigned to auction in 2005 — as a “1932 Babe Ruth New York Yankees Game-Used Road Flannel Jersey Attributed To the Called Shot” — where it sold for $940,000.
It remained in a private collection before heading to Heritage — and now, to a new owner who possesses what Heritage’s director of sports, Chris Ivy, calls “the most significant piece of American sports memorabilia ever offered at auction.”
For information, www.ha.com.