(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Tuesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE Miami Marlins 6, Baltimore Orioles 3 N.Y. Mets 3, N.Y. Yankees 2 Philadelphia Phillies 3, Minnesota Twins 0 Arizona Diamondbacks 6, Kansas City Royals 2 Boston Red Sox 6, Colorado Rockies 0
AMERICAN LEAGUE Cleveland Guardians 5, Detroit Tigers 4 L.A. Angels 5, Seattle Mariners 1 Tampa Bay Rays 4, Toronto Blue Jays 2 Texas Rangers 3, Chicago White Sox 2 Houston Astros 2, Oakland Athletics 8
NATIONAL LEAGUE Cincinnati Reds At Atlanta Braves (PPD) San Diego Padres, 4 Washington Nationals 0 St. Louis Cardinals 2, Pittsburgh Pirates 1 Milwaukee Brewers 1, Chicago Cubs 0 San Francisco Giants 2, Los Angeles Dodgers 5
(NEW YORK) — More than seven-and-a-half decades after his death, Babe Ruth made history again when a jersey he was wearing during his famous “called shot” home run plate appearance was auctioned off over the weekend for $24.1 million, the highest price ever paid for a piece of sports memorabilia.
The winning bid for the Great Bambino’s No. 3 New York Yankees road jersey came in at nearly double the price paid for what is now the second most expensive sports collectible — a mint condition Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card auctioned in 2022 for $12.6 million, according to Heritage Auctions, which handled the Ruth jersey sale.
“This is essentially the Mona Lisa, it’s a very mythical moment that crosses over not only in baseball history but American history, pop culture history,” Chris Ivy, Heritage Auctions’ director of sports auctions, told ESPN. “We’re still talking about it 100 years later, which is one of the reasons why I think it’s the most significant piece of sports memorabilia in the world.”
The name of the person who won the bidding war for Ruth’s flannel jersey was not disclosed. The price includes a 20% buyer’s premium, Heritage Auction said.
On Oct. 1, 1932, during Game 3 of the World Series at Wrigley Field, Ruth gestured to the centerfield wall before crushing a Carlie Root pitch into the bleachers for a three-run homer, the most famous of the 729 homers he hit during his career. The Yankees won the game 7-5 and went on to win the World Series, sweeping the Cubs the next day.
It was the last World Series Ruth played in.
“To me, it was the funniest, proudest moment I had ever had in baseball,” Ruth acknowledged after the game. “I jogged down toward first base, rounded it, looked back at the Cub bench and suddenly got convulsed with laughter. You should have seen those Cubs. There they were — all out on the top step and yelling their brains out — and then [I] connected and they watched it and then fell back as if they were being machine-gunned.”
The last time the Ruth “called shot” jersey was put on the auction block was in 2005, when it sold for $940,000, but that was before it was authenticated as the jersey the Sulton of Swat was wearing when he hit the epic home run, according to Heritage Auction.
“The most ironclad assurance of authenticity is delivered in photographic format, with industry-leading photo matching authenticators MeiGray supplying three photographs of Ruth in the October 1, 1932, World Series Game Three at Wrigley Field wearing this jersey,” Heritage Auction said in its auction catalog.
The auction house said the letter “Y” in “New York” on the jersey “demonstrated to be in perfect alignment with the buttons and curve of the front placket.”
“Other unique attributes utilized in the matching include a small notch on the left side of the ‘N’ in ‘NEW,’ a bend in the bottom of the ‘E’ and a slight tilt in the middle peak of the ‘W,'” the auction house said.
The authentication sent the jersey’s value skyrocketing. Before the auction, Ivy said the bidding was poised to go as high as $30 million.
Ivy told ESPN that a dozen people on the company’s mailing list were expected to bid $15 million to $20 million for the jersey. He said the auction house’s client list runs the gamut from attorneys up to sports team owners.
“This stuff is a great conversation starter as opposed to, you know, buying more IBM stock, investing in real estate,” Ivy said. “A lot of people feel like they were kinda maxed out on those things.”
(PARIS) — Star fencer Lauren Scruggs knew that she would be making history heading into her gold medal matchup against fellow American Lee Kiefer in the women’s individual foil final at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
But the gravity of the moment still would leave her in a state of “disbelief.”
“I thought I was dreaming,” Scruggs told ABC News, recounting the hour leading up to the final. “I never expected to make it that far.”
Though Scruggs came up short of the gold on July 28, losing to Kiefer 15-6 at the revered Grand Palais, Scruggs made history as the first Black American woman to win an individual medal in fencing.
It also marked the first time American women won both gold and silver Olympic medals at individual foil fencing.
At 21, Scruggs is a rising senior at Harvard with an already well-accomplished resume in fencing at the collegiate level, including First Team All-American, according to her Olympic bio.
As a New York City native, she is also a mentor with the Peter Westbrook Foundation, which teaches fencing to underserved communities.
The founder, Peter Westbrook, has quite the history himself. Considered a “legend” among American Olympic fencers, he won a bronze medal in fencing at the 1984 Summer Olympics and competed in four other Games.
Due to a medical illness, however, Westbrook was not able to travel to Paris to see Scruggs win her silver Olympic medal, but she credits him with having a profound impact on her career.
“I think he’s a big reason why I am where I am today,” Scruggs said.
Scruggs hopes her achievements can help spotlight Black participation in the sport.
“I think my success in fencing has helped break stereotypes about what Black people can do and who can be a fencer,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — Three former world record holders, Australia’s Ariarne Titmus, USA’s Katie Ledecky, and Canada’s Summer McIntosh fell well short of their best times in the women’s 400 freestyle event at the 2024 Paris Olympics on Saturday.
In contrast, none of the eight swimmers in the men’s competition on Sunday would have finished better than eighth at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
World-class swimmers rarely get slower in their prime and technology constantly improves, so why aren’t we seeing records drop like usual? Can a pool really be responsible for slowing down the swimmers?
Jud Ready, a professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Material Science and Engineering, teaches a class on engineering in sports and says a pool can be slow. He spoke with ABC News’ “Start Here” about the difference in this 2024 Olympics pool compared to others.
Ready and his alma mater, Georgia Tech, know about pools. The school hosted swimming competitions in the Atlanta 1996 Games and still boasts the so-called “fastest pool in the country.”
So what makes a pool fast? According to Ready, pool engineers obsess over keeping the water calm.
“You want to not have the other swimmers impact each other,” Ready said. “So any sort of waves or wake or splashing or anything like that, you want that to not impact the body next to you.”
When you’re dog paddling, a few splashes might not make a big difference. However, elite swimmers create waves when they thrash. Some swimmers describe riding the wake of others around them. Some of those waves travel downward, and as they bounce back up, it’s like swimming through ever-so-choppy water.
And the depth of the pool plays a critical role, Ready says.
Well, it turns out that the pool in Paris isn’t very deep. The tiles on the bottom are about 2.2 meters underwater, which is about 7 feet deep. Which is not very deep, according to Ready.
According to World Aquatics, the minimum depth for long swimming must be 2 meters (6.5 feet), but a recommended depth of three meters (9.8 feet) is advised to provide the best environment.
While some experts say 3 meters is the best, others say 2.5 is ideal. But none suggest 2.2 meters.
“And if the pool is deep enough, it’s two and a half,” Ready said. “Somebody has done some calculations to determine that two and a half seems to be a magic number where that energy [of thrashing] has dissipated.”
The differences are slight, but they could explain the slightly slower times in the Paris pool. Other factors at play in pool design include gutters to keep water from ricocheting off the sides, lane dividers to dampen the effect from your neighbors, and jets that affect water movement.
“If we were to do that in an Olympic-sized pool, the current to recirculate many hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per hour would create either a current favoring you in one direction or opposing you in another direction,” Ready said.
Ready says modern pools recirculate water from the bottom, pushing swimmers upward. He also mentions that world records were once influenced by full-body swimsuits that made swimmers more buoyant and streamlined, but these swimsuits are now banned at the Olympics, much to his disappointment.
“I want materials to make everything better,” Ready said. “We’ve got technology to make better swimsuits. But some (have) there’s opposition to that. And I’m like, well, let’s go back to swimming in wool swimsuits then, if you’re worried about that.”
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has not yet responded to ABC News’ request for comment.