Babe Ruth stepped to the plate, pointed toward the outfield, and crushed the next pitch…

Babe Ruth stepped to the plate, pointed toward the outfield, and crushed the next pitch into the center-field bleachers.

In billiards, a player calls his shot.
Ruth appeared to have done the same in baseball, on the sport's biggest stage... or so the story goes.

No one knows exactly what Ruth meant by the gesture. He may have been predicting the home run. He may have been counting strikes, responding to the Cubs' dugout, or gesturing toward the crowd.

The gesture is certain; its meaning is not, yet history settled on the most compelling interpretation: Babe Ruth called his shot.

That is the double-edged sword of greatness.

Once someone becomes extraordinary, we stop seeing their actions as neutral. When they are rising, every coincidence becomes evidence of genius. Gesture looks prophetic. Success seems inevitable.

But when they fall, the same force works in reverse. Old mistakes become warnings everyone claims to have noticed. Ambiguous moments are recast as proof of flaws that were supposedly there all along.

We like to believe reputation follows the evidence. More often, reputation shapes what the evidence means.

Legends and cautionary tales are created by the same human instinct, a desire to make the past look inevitable. But a compelling interpretation doesn't make it true.