The Babe can still draw a crowd — and big bucks.
A jersey worn by New York Yankees legend Babe Ruth during one of baseball’s most talked about home runs is up for auction – and is expected to be a feeding frenzy for wealthy sports fans who are ready to fork over tens of millions of dollars.
The Babe’s “Called Shot” jersey from the 1932 World Series will go on sale later this month with a current bid set for an incredible $14.1 million, according to the memorabilia site handling the auction.
The Yankees outfielder — and one of baseball’s greatest sluggers — wore the jersey when he hit the homer against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field during Game 3 of the championship series.
But what makes the moonshot still relevant 92 years later is if “The Great Bambino” gestured toward the outfield fence – calling his shot — before he whacked the next pitch out.
“Ruth’s World Series jersey is the most significant piece of American sports memorabilia to be offered at auction in decades,” Chris Ivy, the director of sports auctions at Heritage, said in a statement.
“Given its history, its mythology, we expect that when the final bid is placed, it will hold the record as the most expensive sports collectible ever to cross the auction block.”
While Ruth gestured toward something during the game, it was not 100 percent clear if it was the centerfield wall.
Still, the famous point-and-swing move has been replicated in various baseball movies and paintings — and likely by hundreds of kids playing sandlot ball — in the years since.
Ruth hit an incredible 714 home runs during his career – the most round-trippers for decades before Hank Aaron broke the record in 1974. He also won seven World Series titles, including in 1932.
The jersey was purchased in the 1990s by a well-known hobby pioneer from an elderly Florida woman whose father was a golfing buddy of Ruth’s near the Yankees spring training grounds in St. Petersburg. She said the jersey was a retirement gift to her father from The Babe.
The sale back then was for $975,000, CBS reported.
The jersey could haul in as much as $30 million once it reaches auction on Aug. 23, Heritage Auctions estimated.
“People said that the buyer was nuts for paying a million dollars for, you know, an old baseball jersey,” Ivy told CBS.
“But at the end of this auction, he’s gonna be looking like a very smart man.”
“In the realm of sports collectible, this is the greatest sports collectible of all time,” Ivy added.
