Almost 90 years after he retired from baseball, Babe Ruth continues to smash his way into the history books. After athrillingbidding war that lastedmore thansix hours,the New York Yankees jersey BabeRuth wore when he called his shot to deep center field in Game 3 of the 1932 World Seriessold Aug. 25 at Heritage Auctions for $24,120,000 to become the worlds most valuable sports collectible. Ruth knocks fellow Yankees legend Mickey Mantle out of the record books, where hed been since 2022. Thats whenHeritage sold a high-grade example of Mantles iconic 1952 Topps card for $12.6 million. Ruths Called Shot jersey, the centerpiece ofHeritages Summer Platinum Night Sports Auction, was recently photo-matched by several third parties, including Professional Sports Authenticator and MeiGray Authenticated. The match used two photos from Getty Images and a third fromThe Chicago Daily Newsshowing Ruth, Lou Gehrig and manager Joe McCarthy in the Wrigley Field dugout on Oct. 1, 1932. Those photos were taken before and after that legendary game, where Ruth hit two home runs, including his Called Shot, the final homer Ruth hit in World Series play. Ruth held on to the jersey for years following his retirement and eventually gifted it to a golfing friend in Florida in the 1940s. It remained with that lucky recipients daughter until the 1990s, when an early sports auction pioneer traveled to Florida to buy the jersey for a six-figure sum. The jersey was immediately sold privately to an unknown collector, who kept it in his collection until it was consigned to auction in 2005, as a 1932 Babe Ruth New York Yankees Game-Used Road Flannel Jersey Attributed To the Called Shot, where it realized $940,000. It remained in a private collection before heading to Heritage, and now, to a new owner who possesses what Heritages Director of Sports, Chris Ivy, calls the most significant piece of American sports memorabilia ever offered at auction. It has been an honor and a privilege to work with this incredible piece of American history, and I am proud that it will now be part of one of the finest private collections in the world, said Ivy. It is clear by the strong auction participation and record price achieved that astute collectors have no doubt as to what this Ruth jersey is and what it represents. The legend of Babe Ruth and the myth and mystery surrounding his called shot are united in this one extraordinary artifact. Ruths fifth-inning home run against the Chicago Cubs during Game 3 of the 1932 World Series has been argued about and debunked and reconsidered and investigated for almost a century, Joe Posnanski wrote in 2023s best-sellingWhy We Love Baseball. That fifth inning home run, which came on a two-strike count from pitcher Charlie Root, has been depicted in paintings, exaggerated in movies and parroted by anyone whos ever played beer-league ball on a rec-league field. Those three words, The Called Shot, will live so long as theres someone left to tell stories about the day Ruth smashed a baseball farther than anyone had ever before hit a baseball at Wrigley Field. In the 1948 book, The Babe Ruth Story(a collaboration with journalist Bob Considine), the legend had become fact, as far as Ruth was concerned. He called that home run the most famous one I ever hit. To that legend, Heritage Auctions proudly offers another chapter. A short recap of the entire three-day sale will appear in next weeks issue. For more information, visit www.HA.com.