In the fifth inning of a tied Game 3, with the Chicago crowd roaring abuse and the Cubs bench jeering every step he took, Babe Ruth stepped in against Charlie Root and produced the most debated home run in baseball history — the "called shot."
A gesture, then a drive into legend
The score stood at 4–4 when Joe Sewell grounded out to short and the Yankee slugger walked to the plate. Cubs players had been riding him without pause, targeting his weight, his age, even his wife, and fans had pelted him with lemons in left field. Ruth yelled back at the dugout, then, with the count at two balls and two strikes, raised his hand and pointed two fingers outward.
Whether the gesture aimed at the center-field fence, the Cubs bench or Root himself remains unsettled — grainy film footage cannot confirm the direction. What followed, however, was unmistakable: Ruth drove the next pitch deep to center, clearing the wall as nearly 50,000 packed into Wrigley Field erupted or fell silent.
A Series decided; a story split
Lou Gehrig homered on the very next pitch, and the Yankees finished the sweep the following day, winning Game 4 by 13–6 for a combined margin of 37–19 across four games. The championship carried extra sting for Chicago: Yankees manager Joe McCarthy had previously been fired by the Cubs, making the triumph a pointed reply to the city that had heckled Ruth all afternoon.
Root denied for the rest of his life that any shot had been called, saying he would have knocked Ruth down with the next pitch. Yet Cubs first baseman Charlie Grimm, public-address announcer Pat Pieper and Gehrig himself later supported Ruth’s version. Ruth, in a Movietone newsreel, told viewers, "I looked out to center field and I pointed. I said, 'I'm going to hit the next pitched ball right past the flag pole.' Well, the good Lord must been with me."
The moment arrived near the summit of a career already crowded with records — sixty home runs in 1927, a final tally of 714 that would stand for decades. The called shot, confirmed or not, marked the point where the man and the myth converged completely under the October sun at Wrigley Field.
