Sport produces more folklore than almost any other pursuit — partly because the stakes feel enormous in the moment, and partly because a good story tends to outlive the box score. Many of the most-repeated "facts" in sports history are exaggerations, misattributions, or outright inventions that stuck because they made a better headline than the truth. This piece works through several of the most durable sports myths and lays out what the historical record actually supports.
The "Called Shot" — Babe Ruth's Pointed Home Run
In Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, Babe Ruth allegedly pointed to the center-field bleachers before hitting a home run to that exact spot, "calling" his shot in front of a hostile Chicago Cubs crowd. Contemporary footage is inconclusive, and eyewitness accounts from the time — including several Cubs players — disagree on whether Ruth was gesturing at the bleachers, at the Cubs dugout (which had been taunting him all game), or simply holding up fingers to indicate the count.
Ruth himself gave conflicting answers over the years, at times playing along with the legend and at other times downplaying it. What is verifiable: he did hit a long home run to center field on a 2-2 count, and the moment was dramatic enough that embellishment took over almost immediately in the next day's newspapers.
Why the myth persists
The called shot fits a satisfying narrative arc — the brash superstar backing up his bravado in the biggest moment. Sports myths that flatter a beloved figure's legend tend to survive scrutiny longer than myths that don't.
The First Marathon and Pheidippides
The modern marathon distance and origin story trace back to the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek messenger said to have run from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce a Greek victory over the Persians in 490 BCE, then collapsed and died after delivering the news. The story comes from Plutarch and Lucian, writing several centuries after the battle — not from a contemporary source.
Herodotus, writing much closer to the events, does describe a professional runner named Pheidippides (or Philippides) making a much longer run — from Athens to Sparta, roughly 240 kilometers, to request military help before the battle. The Athens-to-Sparta run is the better-attested feat; the shorter, fatal victory-announcement run appears to be a later embellishment that better suited a dramatic founding story for the modern Olympic marathon, introduced in 1896.
Abner Doubleday and the "Invention" of Baseball
For decades, American baseball's official origin story credited Civil War general Abner Doubleday with inventing the game in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. A commission convened in the early 1900s by sporting goods magnate Albert Spalding endorsed this account, largely on the strength of one elderly witness's decades-old recollection.
Historians have since established that Doubleday was a cadet at West Point in 1839 and left no writings mentioning baseball at all. Bat-and-ball games resembling baseball — rounders and town ball among them — were already documented in both England and the United States well before 1839. The myth persisted for so long partly because it gave baseball a tidy, single-inventor creation story, and partly because the Baseball Hall of Fame was built in Cooperstown on the strength of it.
The Ancient Olympics as a Purely Amateur, Peaceful Ideal
Modern Olympic messaging has long invoked the ancient Greek games as a model of pure amateur competition held during a universal truce. The reality documented by ancient historians is messier. Winning athletes at Olympia received substantial rewards back in their home cities — cash prizes, tax exemptions, and sometimes lifetime pensions — undercutting the "amateur ideal" framing. The Olympic Truce (ekecheiria) did suspend hostilities around the games between participating city-states, but it protected travel to and from Olympia rather than pausing all warfare across the Greek world, and violations of the truce are recorded in the historical sources.
The First Perfect Game "Nobody Believed"
Sports history is full of claims that a given feat was "the first ever" when it was really the first *documented in that particular league or format*. Perfect games, unbeaten seasons, and undefeated records are frequently reported as unprecedented when a comparable feat occurred earlier in an amateur, regional, or overseas competition that didn't receive the same press coverage. This pattern is less a single myth than a recurring reporting habit — a reminder that "first" claims in sports history are usually bounded by an unstated qualifier (first in the modern era, first in a major league, first with full documentation).
How These Myths Get Tested
- Comparing eyewitness accounts written at the time of the event against accounts written years or decades later
- Checking whether a "first" claim is scoped to a specific league, country, or era
- Looking for the financial or promotional incentive behind who first popularized the story
- Cross-referencing period newspapers, which often reported events very differently from the retrospective version that became popular
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Babe Ruth really call his home run shot?
The evidence is inconclusive. He hit a dramatic home run to center field in the 1932 World Series, but whether his gesture beforehand was a genuine prediction, a response to the Cubs dugout, or simply an indication of the ball-strike count is disputed by eyewitnesses, including players on the field that day.
Who really ran the first marathon?
The Pheidippides legend of a short, fatal run from Marathon to Athens comes from sources written centuries after the battle. Herodotus, a much closer contemporary source, instead documents a professional runner making a far longer run from Athens to Sparta before the battle to request reinforcements.
Did Abner Doubleday invent baseball?
No. The claim originated from a 1905 commission relying on a single unreliable witness. Doubleday was at West Point in 1839, the year he supposedly invented the game, and bat-and-ball games predating that claim were already documented in England and the US.
Was the ancient Olympics truly amateur?
Not in the modern sense. Victorious athletes often received substantial cash rewards, tax breaks, and honors from their home cities, which contradicts a strict amateur ideal even though the Olympic events themselves didn't pay prizes directly.
What was the Olympic Truce actually for?
The ekecheiria protected safe travel to and from the games for athletes and spectators between participating city-states. It did not halt all warfare across the Greek world for the duration of the games, and historical sources record truce violations.
Why do sports myths spread so easily?
A dramatic, simple story is more memorable and shareable than a messy, qualified truth. Myths that flatter a well-known figure or give a sport a tidy origin story tend to be repeated uncritically by journalists, broadcasters, and fans long after historians have corrected the record.
How can you tell if a sports "first" claim is accurate?
Check whether the claim is silently scoped — "first in the NFL" or "first in the modern Olympics" is a very different claim from "first ever." Many disputed firsts turn out to have earlier, less-publicized precedents in amateur or regional competition.
Are called shots common in baseball history?
Genuine, verified called shots are extremely rare. Most claimed instances, including Ruth's, rely on ambiguous gestures and after-the-fact storytelling rather than an unambiguous, contemporaneous prediction followed by the exact outcome.
Did newspapers at the time report these myths accurately?
Not always. Several of these legends grew specifically because early newspaper accounts embellished or simplified events, and later retellings then embellished the embellishment. Comparing multiple period sources is the main way historians catch this.
Why was Cooperstown chosen as baseball's birthplace despite the evidence?
Cooperstown had a promotional and commercial interest in the origin story once it was adopted, and the Baseball Hall of Fame was subsequently built there in 1939. The location choice reinforced the myth rather than the myth following from strong evidence of the location's true significance.
Conclusion
The gap between sports legend and sports history is rarely about outright fabrication — it's usually a dramatic detail that got smoothed into a cleaner story, then repeated until the smoothed version became the accepted one. None of that makes the underlying events less remarkable; if anything, the real, qualified versions of these stories are often more interesting than the myths that replaced them.