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Did Yankees' Babe Ruth Really Call His Shot

Did Yankees' Babe Ruth Really Call His Shot

Yahoo7 hours ago
Did Yankees' Babe Ruth Really Call His Shot originally appeared on Athlon Sports.
The 'Called Shot.' It's a story that's been told so many times that even those not born until decades later have an opinion about it. Heck, the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, even has a plaque regarding the fabled tale.
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First, a little backstory. Babe Ruth spent the 1920s terrorizing pitchers around Major League Baseball in a way that nobody before ever had, or has since. His reign continued into the early 1930s. However, when the Yankees reached the 1932 World Series against the Chicago Cubs, the National League champions spent more time heckling The Babe than they did trying to actually stop him from beating them.
This behavior went both ways as Yankees' Manager Joe McCarthy held a grudge after the Cubs fired him following the 1930 season. In addition, former Bomber Mark Koenig was now playing for Chicago and was being heckled by Ruth and his old Bronx teammates.
In Game Three, this all came to a head when Ruth blasted a home run to straightaway centerfield off pitcher Charlie Root. Now, normally, a Ruth home run wouldn't cause much debate; he hit them pretty frequently after all. But this time was different.
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Ruth supposedly put up his fingers throughout his fifth-inning at-bat to make a gesture of some sort. Finally, with two strikes against him, Ruth vaguely pointed his finger and then hit Root's curveball out of the park for his second homer of the game.
All these years later, the debate rages on: Did Ruth actually point to center field? Was he pointing at Root? At the Cubs' dugout? Was he maybe just being a showman?
Whatever the case may be, baseball fans continue to argue about whether or not The Babe really 'called his shot.' For the sake of preserving baseball's mythology, let's go ahead and say he did.
'Curveball, center pocket!'
This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jul 13, 2025, where it first appeared.
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Aaron Judge is barreling toward the hallowed 500-homer club. He might be joined by several peers
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'The journey mapping tells us people want two, maybe three unique experiences, either inside or outside the ballpark. 'Years ago, if you asked me the question, what was it like in the '80s and '90s designing ballparks? We designed maybe 15 to 20 fan experiences inside the ballpark. With this model, we're designing somewhere between 60 to 80 fan experiences. 'Because it's driven by the journey mapping, driven by the generational needs.' And it's remarkably easy to get caught up in The Battery's stream of diversions. Just steps after exiting the right field gate, the fan is greeted with a mind-bending number of options, with Sports & Social and its many blaring TV screens and game play practically begging your party to commune over a plate of $24 nachos. A splash pad shoots water aloft, allowing parents to toss their kids in to cool off and burn energy on a hot day. 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We just can't leave citizens behind in the big decisions we're making.' From a volume and value standpoint, The Battery has been a significant success. The county reported that in 2024, a record 10.3 million visitors walked its gleaming avenues and alleyways. And the Braves, the lone MLB franchise owned by a publicly-traded corporation, reported $67.3 million in mixed-use development income, a 14% increase over 2023. It would seem like a boomtown for all – county, ballclub, those employed within The Battery and any other stakeholders. Yet economists argue that The Battery and similar developments are classic examples of 'extraction' – that new dollars aren't necessarily being spent but rather moved around, regionally. Certainly, Cobb County captured the revenue that used to go to Fulton County when the Braves played there. Yet much of the activity – a night at the movies, a mid-range dinner, a round of drinks with the boys or the baddies – simply would have occurred somewhere else minus The Battery's existence. 'You built a department store,' says JC Bradbury, an economist and associate professor at Kennesaw State. 'We already have seven of those in Cobb County. It's not transformative for development when you look at a county that's a ($64 billion) economy. It's a rounding error. 'Even though they're always touted as a great economic engine, they're not. And the data bear this out.' Bradbury is a frequent detractor of stadium economic impact projections, but in this case, he's not just a critic; he's a client. A resident of nearby Marietta, he considers himself a Braves fan and has test-driven The Battery on a few occasions. While ample parking decks have made it a regional destination, the area has not seen a so-called 'halo effect' in transforming the area around it, a potential upside stadium proponents frequently cite. 'They like to describe The Battery as, 'Oh, we're recreating Wrigleyville,'' Bradbury says of the once-unique Chicago neighborhood since turned into a replacement-level cash cow for the Cubs. 'The Battery is more like Main Street USA at Disney World. And not all restaurants and bars have succeeded there. 'It's easy to find parking. Are there people there? Yeah. But not much more than if I went to Marietta Square. 'It's certainly not 'Downtown Cobb.'' Much of the area remains unchanged from decades earlier. Cumberland Mall was erected in 1973 and faces many of the challenges similar properties do, though redevelopment is in the mix. Fading strip malls and chain restaurants dot the areas around the interchange. One common opponent: Traffic. It is epic in Atlanta, even in Cobb's relatively advantageous position on the northwest edge of I-285, or the 'perimeter.' Eighty-one Braves home games can choke the grid further, and it's interesting to note that the area around Turner Field downtown has largely thrived in the Braves' absence. When the moon shot falls short Those narratives will be missing from any franchise pitches for new stadiums and taxpayer dollars needed to fund them. And the real estate piece of it has only become more urgent. Both the NFL and MLB aim to centralize revenues among all franchises, particularly national TV money in both sports and gameday revenue in the NFL. It ensures the viability of all teams, regardless of market. Yet revenue from off-site interests – such as The Battery or Arlington's Texas Live! and areas around the Cowboys' stadium in Arlington – are not tossed into the common revenue pool in either league. It is essentially pure profit for the home team and one taking on greater urgency as local and national TV revenues remain uncertain. That's why teams in every sport are opting for a Battery moon shot rather than simply building a stadium. And the consequences when they fail can be significant. One year after The Battery opened, the Oakland Athletics announced plans for what would become a $12 billion proposal in the city's Howard Terminal – a 35,000-seat ballpark and 6 million square feet of mixed-use development, including commercial buildings and high-rise residential units. It ended up being an all-or-nothing proposition: When the club failed to reach agreement with Oakland, it lowered its sights significantly and set them on Las Vegas, where the team aims to begin play in a 33,000-seat stadium on a parcel of land barely big enough to play ball, let alone add the 'live and work' pieces to create the mixed-use holy trinity. In Kansas City, citizens showed exactly why franchises prefer to do stadium deals without public input: They roundly rejected a sales-tax initiative that would have built a $1 billion downtown stadium project for the Royals and funded significant renovations to the Chiefs' stadium. The Royals' proposal included a hotel, a residential development and entertainment venue consuming several downtown blocks. That's not to say politicians heed what might be blowing in the wind. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs recently celebrated approval of $500 million in Chase Field renovations by showing up to a news conference in a Diamondbacks jersey. Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has urged the fast-tracking of a new stadium for the Commanders – a massive multi-billion-dollar mixed-use development on the old RFK Stadium site – even as D.C. councilmembers plead for more time to scrutinize a deal she brokered with the team. The city recently approved $500 million in renovations to their downtown arena after Wizards and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis was quickly rejected in a quixotic bid to build a massive development in nearby Virginia. 'Plan B is a term that has been used to explicitly get stadiums built,' says Bradbury. 'Circumvent the will of the voters: 'We have a Plan B, we're going to get around this.' 'What you saw in Kansas City was voters said, we absolutely do not want tax dollars to go toward renovating a stadium for the Chiefs and a new stadium for the Royals. The Chiefs just won the Super Bowl, they're a popular team and voters were like, 'Nah, we're not doing that.'' The Braves didn't take that chance and this week will realize the fringe benefit of a jewel event once stripped from the region. While the modern life cycle of a stadium is roughly two decades – and thus this first Truist Park All-Star Game may be its last – county officials believe the site will have staying power. Its impact throughout the sports industry certainly will, as everyone chases what's become the standard in development and revenue generation. 'This site has built a tremendous energy beyond any of our comprehension,' says Cupid, the chair of the county commission. 'It looked almost surreal what I saw in the renderings on paper. And they brought it to life. And they did it quickly. And they truly changed the footprint of that area. 'It's become more than just a business, an economic center. It's a center of vibrancy not just for Cobb but the region right now. 'And it continues to grow.'

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