Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and leafing through the Weekend Wall Street Journal, when I came across an ad for a New York auction house offering “the Babe Ruth jersey worn during one of the most iconic moments in sports history” – the home run he hit in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs, which, according to legend, he “called” by pointing to center field right beforehand.

Two questions, Doc: First, did Ruth actually “call” that shot? And if so, are we sure that’s the jersey he wore when he did it?

– Babe Truther

Dear BT,

Good questions both. First, though, here’s the ad.

And here’s the money shot.

Yes, that’s a 30 followed by six zeroes, for those of you keeping score at home.

As for whether Ruth actually called the shot, you be the judge.

The next day’s edition of the Chicago Daily certainly heeded the call.

Then again, not everyone is sold on the legend, as MLB.com’s Chris Landers lays out in great detail. You should read it all, but here’s the nuts to that graf.

So, what’s the problem? Well, there are a few. For starters, of all the reporters at Wrigley that day, the majority didn’t make any mention of it: not Red Smith; not Shirley Povich; not even Grantland Rice, a man who never missed an opportunity to be as dramatic as humanly possible. The Chicago Tribune managed to have two differing accounts in the same issue: Westbrook Pegler claimed that Ruth “laughed derisively and gestured at him, ‘Wait, Mugg, I’m going to hit one out of the yard,'” while Irving Vaughan maintained that the Babe was simply counting how many strikes were on him. What’s more likely? That half of such a collection of sportswriting talent simply missed the biggest athlete in the country talk junk at the plate in the middle of the World Series, or some scribes (including, as it happens, those from Ruth’s hometown) got a little overexcited?

Let’s go to Ruth himself for the tiebreak. Landers says an interview Ruth gave early in 1933 seems awfully definitive.

Hell no. It isn’t a fact. Only a damned fool would have done a thing like that […] Then there was that second strike, and they let me have it again. So I held up that finger again, and I said I still had one left. Now kid, you know damn well I wasn’t pointing anywhere. If I had done that, Root would have stuck the ball in my ear. I never knew anybody who could tell you ahead of time where he was going to hit a baseball. When I get to be that kind of fool, they’ll put me in the booby hatch.

As for that costly jersey (which returned to Wrigley Field last week on a promotional tour), it looks kinda skimpy for the Big Guy, no? For those of you keeping score at home.