YouTube Gold: Lou Gehrig On Babe Ruth’s Called Shot

Baseball is full of history, statistics, more statistics, iconic moments and stories.

You can run down some of the great ones pretty quickly: Jackie Robinson’s difficult and brilliant debut to break the color line, the Catch, Lou Gehrig’s Farewell Speech, and, perhaps most iconic of any baseball moment besides perhaps Gehrig’s speech, Babe Ruth’s Called Shot.

This came in the 1932 World Series against the Chicago Cubs in the fifth inning of Game Three with the score tied 4-4.

Ruth had two strikes and the crowd was riding him pretty hard. There is a lot of uncertainty about whether or not he actually called his shot. Unlike today, there aren’t endless video replays and cell phone cameras to provide multiple angles so it was unclear for a long time.

But if you accept the word of Gehrig, there is no doubt: Ruth called his shot.

This is an old radio clip that resurfaced recently where Gehrig very clearly states his opinion: Ruth absolutely did it.

Ruth is a strange athlete to modern eyes. He was never slim and in later in his career he was quite heavy. But before he became a feared hitter he was a superb pitcher and he applied immense power to both pursuits. His hand-eye coordination must have been freakishly good.