Very cool: Frank Thomas with Babe Ruth’s actual Called Shot bat at Cooperstown

Posted on by

Chuck Garfien had a surprise for me during Comcast SportsNet Chicago’s Sports Talk Live Thursday. While discussing my new book, Babe Ruth’s Called: The Myth and Mystery Behind Baseball’s Greatest Home Run, he showed a clip of Frank Thomas’ recent visit to Coopertown.

Lo and behold, there was the new Hall of Famer looking at Ruth’s actual bat from the Called Shot. Then donning white gloves, he swung another one of Ruth’s bats. It had notches in it from Ruth recording his homers. Very cool.

Here is the link to the video.

Also, while on the publicity front, here is a link to my interview with Corey McPherrin at Fox 32 this week.

And many thanks to Ron Kaplan of the Baseball Bookshelf for doing a podcast on my book.

In the intro, Kaplan writes:

Forgive me if I can’t cite a specific source, but I ‘m guessing more books have been written about Babe Ruth than any other athlete. Stand to reason; Ruth made his major league debut 100 years ago as a phenom for the Boston Red Sox, so there’s been a lot of time to digest what he’s meant to the national pastime, especially in the aftermath of the Black Sox scandal when he was given almost total credit for “saving the game.”

Remember, Ruth played at a time when there was no television, and even radio was in its early years of sports coverage. So the responsibility fell to the writers, hence so many articles and books, even now.

In Babe Ruth’s Called Shot: The Myth and Mystery of Baseball’s Greatest Home Run, Ed Sherman, a longtime sportswriter for the Chicago Tribune and the host of ShermanReport.com, a national website on sports media, focuses on perhaps the one “defining moment” in a superlative career.

 

 

One thought on “Very cool: Frank Thomas with Babe Ruth’s actual Called Shot bat at Cooperstown”

  1. Just recently purchased a copy of your most excellent BABE RUTH’S CALLED SHOT.Finally, a detailed analysis of this great event! One question I have, though, is why didn’t you include the comments by the Cub’s first base coach who gave a pretty clear account. The Cub’s bench was verbally raking him over the coals and the ring leader of it all was the guy that was scheduled to pitch for them in the next game. This one coach says he overheard the Babe say to the one ringleader [while pointing at him] that “tomorrow you’ll be out there” [and continuing the pointing in his sweeping motion toward the direction of the pitcher’s mound] “and we’ll see what you can do then.”

Comments are closed.