Ruth’s 60th-HR bat stirs controversy

As part of its collection of Babe Ruth items, the Baseball Hall of Fame says it has the bat the slugger used to hit his thenrecord 60th home run in 1927.

A private collector also claims to own the bat, and he’s selling it at auction. PSA/DNA, one of the leading sports memorabilia authenticators, supports his assertion.

The bat being sold by the anonymous collector can be traced back to Joe E. Brown, the vaudeville comedian with whom Ruth had a friendship. Brown said Ruth personally gave him the 60th-homer bat in 1927. The bat is signed, “To Joe E. Brown From Babe Ruth.”

Brown then passed the bat down to his son Joe L. Brown, who was general manager of the Pirates from 1955-76. The younger Brown later sold the bat to a collector.

The bat in the Hall of Fame was given to the museum by sports writer James Kahn in 1939, and Kahn was quoted in the Otsego Farmer — a newspaper in Cooperstown, N.Y. — as saying at the time that then-Yankees manager Miller Huggins gave him the bat after the game on Sept. 30, 1927.

PSA authenticator Jon Taube, who has done extensive research on Ruth’s bats, doesn’t dispute Kahn was given a bat after that game. But Taube doesn’t believe it was the one used for the record-breaking homer.

“It was very unlikely Huggins came out of the dugout and handed him bat,” Taube said. “He handed (Kahn) a bat, no question about that, (but) was it the bat that hit the 60th home run? I doubt that very highly.

“Many of the items that were given to the Hall were presented as, ‘Here’s the bat that did this (or) here’s the glove,’ and there was no follow-up.”