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Dan Hajducky, ESPN
In perhaps the most anticipated sports memorabilia auction ever, the jersey worn by baseball legend Babe Ruth when he “called his shot” in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series has sold for $24.12 million with Heritage Auctions, setting an auction record for most expensive sports collectible.
The sale of the New York Yankees road Ruth jersey, which includes the standard 20% buyer’s premium, was available to the public for the first time in 19 years.
The previous record price for any sports collectible sold at auction was for a rare mint condition Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle card. That sold for $12.6 million in 2022. The Ruth jersey also far eclipsed the $10.1 million that a Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls jersey from Game 1 of the 1998 NBA Finals fetched at auction that same year.
The last time the Ruth jersey sold at auction was 2005, when it went for $940,000, but it was only linked to the 1932 World Series — not conclusively Game 3 or the “called shot,” when Ruth made a pointing gesture while at bat and then hit the home run into center field off Cubs pitcher Charlie Root. But multiple companies in recent years photo-matched the jersey to Game 3 of the World Series at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, which increased its value exponentially.
When Heritage announced the jersey’s auction in May, Chris Ivy, Heritage Auctions’ director of sports auctions, said it could fetch upward of $30 million and all but guaranteed that it would set a new sports collectible record.
“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,” Ivy 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. When it hits that new record, high tide raises all boats. I think more people are gonna be interested in this hobby.”
While the identity of the buyer isn’t currently public, Ivy told ESPN there were a dozen people “on our mailing list that would pay between $15 and $20 million” for the Ruth jersey.
“This stuff is a great conversation starter as opposed to, you know, buying more IBM stock, investing in real estate — a lot of people feel like they were kinda maxed out on those things,” Ivy said. “[The clientele] runs the gamut, you know, attorneys up to team owners. Team owners are interesting: They love the history of the game, owning stuff like this. They’ve invested and spend a good amount of their time on their sports.”
“A Babe ‘called shot’ jersey,” Barry Meisel, president and COO of MeiGray Authenticated, one of the companies who photo-matched the jersey, told ESPN “could be, if not the, most important sports relic in American history, in world history.”
The Yankees won the game 7-5 and swept the Cubs the next day to win the series.
That was Ruth’s last World Series, and the “called shot” was his last home run in a World Series, Mike Provenzale, the production manager for Heritage’s sports department, told The Associated Press.
A photo-matched 1952 and 1953 Mickey Mantle World Series jersey sold for $3 million; despite not being photo-matched, a game-worn 1951 Jackie Robinson Brooklyn Dodgers jersey, with pants from 1950, sold for $5.52 million, a record for any Jackie Robinson item; a photo-matched 1954 Hank Aaron jersey, worn during his rookie season and possibly his first at-bat, sold for $2.1 million, a record for any Aaron item.
A 1911 “Shoeless” Joe Jackson rookie year bat sold for $2.01 million with buyer’s premium, setting the record paid for a baseball bat.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.