(NEW YORK) — More than seven-and-a-half decades after his death, Babe Ruth made history again when a jersey he was wearing during his famous “called shot” home run plate appearance was auctioned off over the weekend for $24.1 million, the highest price ever paid for a piece of sports memorabilia.
The winning bid for the Great Bambino’s No. 3 New York Yankees road jersey came in at nearly double the price paid for what is now the second most expensive sports collectible — a mint condition Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card auctioned in 2022 for $12.6 million, according to Heritage Auctions, which handled the Ruth jersey sale.
“This is essentially the Mona Lisa, it’s a very mythical moment that crosses over not only in baseball history but American history, pop culture history,” Chris Ivy, Heritage Auctions’ director of sports auctions, told ESPN. “We’re still talking about it 100 years later, which is one of the reasons why I think it’s the most significant piece of sports memorabilia in the world.”
The name of the person who won the bidding war for Ruth’s flannel jersey was not disclosed. The price includes a 20% buyer’s premium, Heritage Auction said.
On Oct. 1, 1932, during Game 3 of the World Series at Wrigley Field, Ruth gestured to the centerfield wall before crushing a Carlie Root pitch into the bleachers for a three-run homer, the most famous of the 729 homers he hit during his career. The Yankees won the game 7-5 and went on to win the World Series, sweeping the Cubs the next day.
It was the last World Series Ruth played in.
“To me, it was the funniest, proudest moment I had ever had in baseball,” Ruth acknowledged after the game. “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. There they were — all out on the top step and yelling their brains out — and then [I] connected and they watched it and then fell back as if they were being machine-gunned.”
The last time the Ruth “called shot” jersey was put on the auction block was in 2005, when it sold for $940,000, but that was before it was authenticated as the jersey the Sulton of Swat was wearing when he hit the epic home run, according to Heritage Auction.
“The most ironclad assurance of authenticity is delivered in photographic format, with industry-leading photo matching authenticators MeiGray supplying three photographs of Ruth in the October 1, 1932, World Series Game Three at Wrigley Field wearing this jersey,” Heritage Auction said in its auction catalog.
The auction house said the letter “Y” in “New York” on the jersey “demonstrated to be in perfect alignment with the buttons and curve of the front placket.”
“Other unique attributes utilized in the matching include a small notch on the left side of the ‘N’ in ‘NEW,’ a bend in the bottom of the ‘E’ and a slight tilt in the middle peak of the ‘W,'” the auction house said.
The authentication sent the jersey’s value skyrocketing. Before the auction, Ivy said the bidding was poised to go as high as $30 million.
Ivy told ESPN that a dozen people on the company’s mailing list were expected to bid $15 million to $20 million for the jersey. He said the auction house’s client list runs the gamut from attorneys up to sports team owners.
“This stuff is a great conversation starter as opposed to, you know, buying more IBM stock, investing in real estate,” Ivy said. “A lot of people feel like they were kinda maxed out on those things.”
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