Babe Ruth lived in his own little world, blithely oblivious to rules and regulations, anything that might have interfered with his carefree approach to life.

This occasionally caused problems for the defining figure of baseball's first 50 years. There was, for example, the matter of his called home run in the 1932 World Series, one of the great sports moments of the century.

Ruth, who had a lifetime batting average of .342 with 714 home runs, was convinced that he could do just about anything he wanted, whenever he wanted. So, when the Yankees reached the 1932 World Series against the Chicago Cubs, he put that theory to the test.

In Game 3 of that Series, on Oct. 1, he got into an ultimate battle of one-upmanship with Cubs bench jockeys, a confrontation that concluded with the Babe standing at home plate, apparently predicting that he was about to hit one over the fence.

A called shot.

Right there, in the middle of a World Series game. With a ballpark full of Cubs fans booing him. And a dugout full of Cubs players needling him.

Sounds outrageous, doesn't it?

Ruth thought so, too.

"Nobody but a blankety-blank fool would have done what I did that day," he told writer John P. Carmichael. "When I think of what an idiot I could have been if I had struck out. And I could have, too, just as well as not because I had made up my mind to swing at the next pitch if I could reach it with my bat."

On the scoreboard, where it really counted, the Yankees dominated. They won the opener 12-6 with Ruth and Lou Gehrig homering. In Game 2, New York won again, 5-2. With the Series in Chicago, Ruth now faced a hostile crowd as well as the Cubs bench.

The abuse was nonstop and the Babe gave as good as he got. In the first inning, he hit a three-run homer on his first swing and chugged around the bases with a huge grin. By the fifth, the score was tied at 4-4 and the taunting had reached a fever pitch. Charlie Root was on the mound for the Cubs and his first pitch was a called strike. Ruth, holding the bat with his left hand, raised his right as if to acknowledge strike one.

The next two pitches were balls, then a called strike. Again Ruth raised his right hand for strike two.

A fan, Matt Kandle, filmed a home movie of Ruth's at-bat. The fuzzy first frame shows the slugger pointing, but it's not clear at what. It could be at Root. It could be at the Cubs dugout. Or the fence.

Ruth gave this account to Carmichael: "I didn't exactly point to any one spot, like the flagpole. I just sort of waved to the whole fence, but that was foolish enough.

"I didn't point to any spot, but as long as I'd called the first two strikes on myself, I had to go through with it. It was dammed foolishness."

Ruth hit Root's next pitch into the bleachers and chortled as he circled the bases, clasping his hands over his head like a triumphant fighter.

Did he really call his shot? Could he have been that audacious?

An air of mystery surrounded the event because only one writer, Joe Williams, sports editor of Scripps-Howard Newspapers, mentioned it the next day before others did.

Those in the ballpark that day had divided opinions. Catcher Gabby Hartnett said the Babe was gesturing to the Cubs bench, not pointing to the bleachers.

Gehrig, who followed Ruth's homer with one of his own, said, "What do you think of that big monkey? Calling his shot and getting away with it."

The debate never stopped and Ruth was often coy about it, adding to the mystery. In the end, though, that home run remains one of the most talked-about moments in World Series history.

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