Landis
He raised his arm up in the air and had one finger [pointing]. He definitely pointed. Everyone saw him do it.
—Lincoln Landis, who attended the game with his uncle, Kenesaw Mountain Landis
He never intended to play the role. But as the years passed, taking with them the spectators and participants on hand for Game Three of the 1932 World Series, Lincoln Landis became a self-appointed guardian of one of the most important moments in baseball history.
During an interview on a chilly winter day early in 2013, Landis, now 90, reflected on being there at Wrigley Field that day. His voice was strong, and so was his conviction. Yes, Babe Ruth called his shot, Landis insisted. You bet he pointed, he maintained with firm certainty.
Whenever a modern sports historian calls the Called Shot a myth, Landis pulls out his ultimate trump card: I was there; you weren’t.
“Everyone in the stadium knew he pointed to center field,” Landis said. “No doubt about it.”
Lincoln Landis (right, as a boy) was thrilled to discover a picture of him sitting with his famous uncle, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, during Game Three of the 1932 World Series.
PHOTO COURTESY OF LINCOLN LANDIS
Landis relishes every opportunity to go back to the past and talk about attending his first Major League baseball game with his uncle in 1932. Of course, it wasn’t just any baseball game, and his uncle wasn’t just another fan.
Ten years old at the time, Landis received a phone call from his uncle, asking if he and his brother, Charlie, wanted to attend Game Three of the World Series between the Yankees and Cubs. Young Lincoln called him Uncle Squire, but the rest of the world knew him as Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the former judge whom President Theodore Roosevelt had appointed and who became baseball’s first commissioner.
“He had white hair at an early age,” Landis said. “He picked up the nickname [Squire] and never gave it up. It really fit his personality.”
The commissioner and young Landis’s father, Frederick, who served as a US congressman, were the only survivors of five brothers. Young Landis remembered visits from Uncle Squire during which the brothers sat on the front porch, smoking cigars. The discussion always touched on politics rather than baseball. Nevertheless, young Landis always emphasized the baseball angle whenever he talked about his famous uncle to his friends.
“They were impressed,” Landis said. “I was short, but having the commissioner as my uncle made me stand a little taller.”
Growing up in Logansport, Indiana, Landis and his brother naturally were huge Cubs fans. They were overwhelmed when they saw Wrigley’s green field for the first time. Landis remembered it as “a beautiful sunny day.” He and his brother, along with the rest of the commissioner’s entourage, sat in the commissioner’s box just to the right of the Cubs dugout. Photographers snapped pictures as the number one man in baseball, with his distinctive white hair and piercing eyes, peered out over the field.
“This was really big-time,” Landis said.
Back then, Landis had no way of knowing that one of those pictures would provide a sense of validation more than seven decades later.
Landis openly admits that he can’t recall exact details of the game. For instance, he doesn’t recall Ruth hitting a three-run homer in the first inning. That should have made for a searing memory in itself, considering that it was the first time Landis had ever seen the great slugger at the plate. But perhaps he was distracted by munching on a hot dog and soda or something else caught his attention. We can forgive him a little fuzziness of memory. After all, he attended the game more than 80 years ago.
Landis is certain about what he saw during Ruth’s at bat in the fifth inning. “That event made such an impression on me,” he said. What stood out for him was the fervor of the crowd. As Ruth walked to the plate, Wrigley Field boiled over in anticipation of his next confrontation with Charlie Root. Even at the tender age of 10, Landis knew this moment was different. “There was such an enthusiastic roar from the Cubs fans,” he said. “They were really razzing him. . . . We were all yelling.”
Sitting next to the third base dugout, Landis had a clear view of Ruth, who hit left-handed. Landis remembers the two strikes called on the slugger but not the two balls that Root threw. “After the first pitch he held up his right arm and raised one finger,” Landis said. “Even as a kid, I knew he was saying, ‘That was only the first one.’
“Then he turned around and took his stance again. After the second strike he raised two fingers. It doesn’t take a genius to realize, ‘That’s only two strikes.’ In my mind he’s saying, ‘Just wait and see what I’m going to do with the next one.’”
What about the moment of truth?
“Then he resumed his regular spot and pointed to center field. He raised his arm up in the air and had one finger [pointing]. He definitely pointed. Everyone saw him do it.”
Landis remembers seeing the ball fly through the air. A novice fan, initially he thought it might be a high pop-up. He soon learned otherwise, however, as the ball soared over everyone and then the center field fence before disappearing into a throng of fans anxious for a souvenir.
What happened next, in Landis’s view, proved to him that Ruth pointed. The Cubs fans, who had been riding him mercilessly just a few seconds earlier, suddenly started to cheer for the slugger and the deed they had just witnessed. There was such a commotion, Landis said, that fans didn’t pay attention to the next batter, Gehrig, who homered on the first pitch.
“Everyone was standing up and waving their arms,” Landis said. “This was not just another Babe Ruth homer. He was expected to hit homers. This was different. The fans went bananas. They were going crazy because of what they saw him do. It was: ‘Wow, did you just see that? How could he do that? How did he hit the ball where he pointed to center field?’
“If anyone in the stadium doubted that he pointed and hit it there, I would be very surprised. All the fans knew it. That’s why they were going nutty. They suddenly had a love for Babe Ruth. He pulled a good one on them. We were razzing him, and he stuffed it down our throats. There’s absolutely no question that the fans were saying he pointed. And by golly, he did it. It was unbelievable.”
Those back-to-back homers by Ruth and Gehrig effectively ended the Cubs in Game Three. But Landis does have another lasting memory from that day.
Commissioner Landis asked whether his nephews wanted to meet one of the players. Sure, they said. They were Cubs fans, so they requested Gabby Hartnett. A few minutes later, they were shaking hands with the future Hall of Famer. That’s the moment when it dawned on Landis that his uncle was a very important man. “We started thinking Uncle Squire must have a lot of power to get him to come and meet us.”
Only later did young Landis discover that his uncle deplored the antics that had played out between the Cubs and Ruth during their big confrontation. The commissioner threatened to impose a fine on players if they misbehaved in Game Four.
“He could be persnickety,” said Landis of his no-nonsense uncle.
After chatting with Hartnett the boys said good-bye to the commissioner and went back home. In the years following the game, Landis didn’t think much about the Called Shot. He eventually attended West Point, served in the army for 20 years, and then worked for the government. After retiring in 1991 he kept himself busy by writing a book about his father, uncle, and their brothers.
But for Landis, Game Three of the 1932 World Series “always was in my blood.” As the years passed, people tried to poke holes in the fabric of Ruth’s famous homer, which upset the army man. So, along with the book about his family, he resolved to “straighten out the record about Babe Ruth.”
Landis knew photographers constantly shot pictures of the commissioner, so he asked his son, Tim, an avid collector of baseball memorabilia, whether he could find a photo of him with his uncle from Game Three.
“Sure, Dad,” said Tim. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”
In 2002 Tim spotted an interesting auction on eBay. It was a picture of Judge Landis, resting his chin on a railing, during the 1932 World Series. A familiar young face was sitting next to the commissioner. “I looked at it and said, ‘Oh my God, that’s me.’ It was the greatest day of my life,” recalled Lincoln. “To think that there was a picture of me with Uncle Squire.”
Tim Landis bid $362.50 for the photo of his father and granduncle. In Lincoln’s eyes it represented an important piece of evidence. The picture helped validate his position that Ruth had pointed to center field. “It shows that I was there and where I was sitting,” Landis said.
Landis knows that some people doubt the veracity of his memory because he can’t recall other aspects of the game, especially Ruth’s three-run homer in the first. But so be it. It was the moment of a lifetime for the boy. “I feel so honored to have been there and to remember it so clearly,” he said.