CHICAGO — Some names in baseball are meant to be untouchable, and Babe Ruth sits at the top of that list. For a century he has been the sport’s founding myth and the New York Yankees’ patron saint. He turned a Boston castoff into pinstriped royalty and gave Yankee Stadium its enduring nickname, the House That Babe Ruth Built. His 714 home runs, his 60-homer season in 1927, and his titles in the Bronx remain the standard by which Yankees greatness is measured.
So it landed hard this week when a modern MLB star took direct aim at that legacy. It went after the man himself, at the level of whether he ever walked the earth. And it came from an unlikely corner of the game, from a player who had shared a field with the Yankees only days earlier. For Yankees fans, it read less like a hot take and more like a shot at the family crest.
The timing gave it teeth. Babe Ruth’s most mythologized moment did not even happen in the Bronx. It came at Wrigley Field, against the Chicago Cubs, during the 1932 World Series, when Babe Ruth supposedly pointed toward the bleachers and homered on the next pitch. Baseball still calls it the called shot. Now a face of the current Cubs, in the city where that legend was born, had something to say about the player Yankees fans revere most.
Yankees fans have absorbed plenty of loud opinions about their history. This one traveled further than almost any of them. It did not simply diminish the greatest of all Yankees. It questioned whether he was ever real, and it dragged a strange debate onto a sport that assumed the story was settled. Babe Ruth is the rare figure whose myth outgrew the box score, and that is exactly what turned him into a target.
The comment that set off the noise
The player is Pete Crow-Armstrong, the Cubs’ All-Star center fielder. On Kristin Cavallari’s podcast, “Let’s Be Honest,” he was asked for an unpopular opinion or a favorite piece of conspiracy talk. He suggested that Babe Ruth may never have existed at all.
He framed it as a theory he enjoys more than one he fully believes.
“Babe Ruth never existed is one that I like,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I heard some pitcher with the Mariners … I think he did some podcast on Zoom where he was going down the rabbit hole with somebody about how Babe Ruth never existed.”
Pressed on whether he truly doubted one of the game’s giants, Crow-Armstrong doubled down. He tied his doubt to the idea that early baseball was a softer game.
“We always talk about how the game is evolving, people might as well have been like underhanding the ball to that guy,” Crow-Armstrong said. “And he’s regarded still as one of the best players ever. Might as well dive further into it and be like, well, maybe he just never existed.”
A theory that started with a reliever
Crow-Armstrong did not invent the idea. He credited a pitcher, and the trail leads to Tayler Saucedo. In a 2024 interview, Saucedo, then with the Seattle Mariners, floated the same claim after a question about his bullpen’s favorite conspiracy theories.
Saucedo’s case rested on the thin film record of Babe Ruth’s era.
“We don’t think he exists. … There’s not a lot of videos of him playing,” Saucedo said. “It’s just like one of the same video that we always see, him trotting around or doing something. So we’re pretty strong on that he doesn’t exist.”
The clip goes viral, and the pushback follows
The remark did not stay inside the podcast. A clip posted to social media by the account Talkin’ Baseball on Aug. 3 spread fast, drawing hundreds of thousands of views within a day. Plenty of Yankees fans were among those who did not find the joke funny.
The criticism was blunt.
“This may be the single dumbest theory I have ever heard in my life,” one fan wrote.
Another pointed to plain evidence.
“I grew up in Baltimore and have been to his childhood home several times. Babe existed. How stupid,” the fan wrote.
Baseball commentators pushed back as well. They noted that Babe Ruth’s career ended less than a century ago and that people are alive today who met him. Most figured Crow-Armstrong was joking.
Why it hits home for the Yankees
For the Yankees, the timing carries an edge. He spoke days after facing them at Wrigley Field, where the Yankees took two of three from the Cubs to open the month. Crow-Armstrong still left a mark. He beat the Yankees in the middle game with a go-ahead triple and scored twice in a 5-2 win. Rookie outfielder Spencer Jones homered in that game for the Yankees.
The Yankees salvaged the series the next day. Gerrit Cole worked into the sixth inning, Jose Caballero hit a two-run homer, and David Bednar closed a 2-1 win for his 24th save. The Yankees left town with the series in hand, then watched a Cubs star swing at their most sacred name.
Crow-Armstrong is no fringe voice. He entered the week leading the majors with roughly 6.8 wins above replacement, a legitimate National League MVP candidate alongside Shohei Ohtani. He became the first Cubs player with back-to-back 25-homer, 25-steal seasons.
But Babe Ruth stays beyond the reach of any single take. His plaque stands in Monument Park. His No. 3 hangs retired at Yankee Stadium. The called shot at Wrigley, real or embellished, ties him forever to the home ballpark of the player now doubting him. For now the debate lives online, a viral clip built on a wink, and a Yankees legend who needs no defense.
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