After five months of slow and steady, baseball is about to shift into fast and furious mode. It’s almost September, which means the annual all-out sprint to the postseason is about to begin.

Unless it’s already happened, and we missed it.

The oddsmakers at FanGraphs seem to think the playoff picture is all but set already.

Entering play on Thursday, FanGraphs had six teams in the American League with a better than 74 percent chance of making the playoffs, and only one other with even a 20 percent chance of getting in. The National League is even more clearly defined with five teams having at least a 90 percent chance of making it, another sitting at just below 75 percent, and the only other serious contender having just a 25.3 percent chance.

Every other NL team has playoff odds in the single digits, which wasn’t true as recently as Aug. 1, when the day started with 19 different teams having at least an 11 percent chance of making the playoffs and a 20th — the defending champion Texas Rangers — having a 9.4 percent chance.

The playoff field, it turns out, might have a lot more to do with what happened the past five weeks than what happens in the next five.

There remain tight division races in the AL East and AL Central — and arguably the NL West — but those races are among teams that have a leg up in the wild card and don’t necessarily need a division title to play in October.

The New York Yankees (99.4 percent chance of making the playoffs), Baltimore Orioles (97.8 percent) and Cleveland Guardians (92.5 percent) are basically postseason locks in the American League, while the Houston Astros (90.3 percent) and Minnesota Twins (87.7 percent) are statistically safe bets. The Kansas City Royals currently hold the final wild card spot with a 75.1 percent chance of keeping it.

Elsewhere, the Boston Red Sox (39.1 percent) are the only other team truly in the running. The Seattle Mariners are down to 12.6 percent and the Tampa Bay Rays — who made a little bit of noise in July — are down to a 4 percent chance.

In the National League, the Los Angeles Dodgers (100 percent), Philadelphia Phillies (99.5 percent) and Milwaukee Brewers (99.3 percent) have all but clinched a spot in the postseason, while the red-hot-since-the-break San Diego Padres (95.1 percent) and Arizona Diamondbacks (92 percent) have catapulted into strong positions to join them.

The preseason favorite Atlanta Braves are decimated by injuries, but even they have a strong 74.6 percent chance of winning the final wild card spot. The only team meaningfully chasing the Braves are the New York Mets whose playoff odds are down to 25.5 percent after spiking at just over 50 percent in late July. No other NL team has playoff odds in the double digits with only the San Francisco Giants (7 percent) having better than a 3 percent chance.

Such clarity really started at the All-Star break. Baseball’s best teams since the break are the Diamondbacks (23-8), Padres (22-7), Dodgers (20-11), Royals (19-11), Astros (18-12) and Brewers (18-11), and those six have shifted the balance of every nearly undecided playoff spot.

The Astros have thoroughly separated themselves from the Mariners in the AL West. Those two were within a game of one another at the break, but the Mariners have floundered for weeks and have a losing record even since the trade deadline despite making significant additions (the going-nowhere Oakland A’s have outplayed them in August).

The AL wild card race has long had one spot basically guaranteed (the second-place team in the East will undoubtedly be a wild card), but the Royals and Twins have taken control of the other two. They’re tied, 3 1/2 games ahead of the Red Sox and at least six games ahead of everyone else. It’s not an insurmountable lead, but here’s one Red Sox blog attempting to do the math on what it would take for the Red Sox to close that gap.

Twins are on a 90/91-win pace. To get to 92, they’re gonna need to go 25-11.

Suppose 5-5 against AZ/BAL/NYY, they’ll need to go 20-6 against the other teams.

They desperately need to rip off a 10-2 stretch or something in this upcoming set to make the math work. https://t.co/xnh14lOalA

— Chris Hatfield (@SPChrisHatfield) August 22, 2024

In the National League, the Brewers have distanced themselves from the rest of the Central. As of July 13 — the weekend before the All-Star Game — the Cardinals were within 3 1/2 games of first place and every team in the division had at least an 8 percent chance of making the playoffs. The Brewers are now the division’s only team above .500, and none of the others has even a 3 percent chance of playing in October.

In the NL West, the Giants have been better than most since the break (18-14), but they have not been able to keep pace with the charging Padres and Diamondbacks, each of whom might have caught the heavily favored Dodgers had the Dodgers not also been on a roll. One team is going to win the West, and the other two are going to be heavy favorites to advance as wild cards. FanGraphs has the Padres and Diamondbacks playoff odds on par with the Guardians, who have been one of the best teams in baseball with vibes that are off the charts.

With the Philllies in control of the NL East, the only other National League spot somewhat up for grabs is the final wild card, which is currently held by the scrambling Braves, who just added Austin Riley to an injured list that already included Spencer Strider, Ronald Acuna Jr. and Ozzie Albies. If the Mets can get hot — like they were in July — they might be able to close the gap and make a legitimate run at unseating the preseason favorites for a playoff spot.

The Red Sox, too, could perhaps get on a roll and unseat one of the favorites from AL Central to sneak into the postseason. It’s not that there’s nothing to play for in the next five weeks.

But when all is said and done, and the playoff field is set, we might find that the real sprint to October was finished before the calendar even flipped to September.

(Top photo: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

William McMichael, the coach at Detroit’s Mumford High School, insisted he wasn’t looking for publicity when he offered a position to Connor Stalions, the staffer at the center of Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal and the central character in an upcoming Netflix documentary.

Publicity found him anyway. Mumford, a program that has gone 2-16 the past two seasons, made national headlines last week after news broke that Stalions would be on the coaching staff. McMichael’s phone rang all morning, and reporters showed up at practice to catch a glimpse of the coach he described as “the most hated man in college football.”

“I’ve been getting bombarded,” McMichael said with a chuckle.

But McMichael wasn’t the first coach to take an interest in Stalions. Before Stalions accepted a volunteer position with Mumford, he was under consideration for the defensive coordinator job at Berkley High School, a program outside of Detroit that finished 0-9 last season and was outscored 382-46. The ensuing controversy, detailed in email correspondence obtained by The Athletic via a public records request, offered a window into the half-life of the Michigan sign-stealing scandal, which continues to have far-reaching consequences.

Since October, the NCAA has been investigating allegations that Stalions coordinated a scheme to collect video footage of opposing teams’ signals shot from the stands and appeared incognito on the sideline for a game between Central Michigan and Michigan State. The NCAA shared a draft of potential infractions with Michigan earlier this month and could deliver a formal notice of allegations any day.

Michigan fired linebackers coach Chris Partridge in November for allegedly interfering with the investigation, and head coach Sherrone Moore faces allegations that he deleted a string of text messages with Stalions. Meanwhile, Netflix on Tuesday is set to release a documentary called “Sign Stealer,” described in promotional materials as a film “told directly by viral villain Connor Stalions, who forever changed college football.”

Stalions hasn’t spoken publicly about the scandal aside from a brief statement issued through his lawyer when he resigned in November. He did, however, address the situation in emails to Berkley School District administrators as he pleaded his case to become Berkley’s defensive coordinator. In the emails, Stalions appeared to reference the documentary as part of an effort to clear his name.

“Legally, I cannot get into the details, but I have great news!” Stalions wrote to Berkley administrators on March 8. “While I understand what has come with my name over the last five months, very soon the media, the NCAA and all the misinformation about the entire NCAA ‘investigation’ is going to be exposed. I’m excited that Berkley Schools will have the opportunity to be nationally portrayed in a positive light in this story.”

The appeal didn’t work. Stalions didn’t get the job. His attempt to join the staff at Berkley High School, like seemingly every other aspect of this story, left a trail of controversy in its wake.

On Feb. 15, Casey Humes, the first-year football coach at Berkley, emailed an executive assistant with the Berkley School District human resources department to request that a new football coach be added to Edustaff, a third-party staffing agency that Berkley uses for substitute teachers, coaches and other contract employees.

The administrative assistant forwarded Humes’ email to Taylor Horn, Berkley’s athletic director, for approval. “Yes, he is good to go,” Horn replied roughly 15 minutes later. The same day, Horn emailed Humes to inquire about the new hire.

“Have I met (Connor)?” Horn asked. “What position is he taking?”

Humes assured Horn that he wasn’t trying to keep Stalions’ hiring a secret.

“I was in the middle of drafting the email for you now,” Humes replied. “I was going to have (Stalions) meet me at the high school to meet with you tonight.”

This exchange touched off a conflagration involving the district superintendent, human resources, the school principal and Horn, who resigned as Berkley’s athletic director at the end of the school year. Horn, reached by email, declined to say if his resignation was related to the Stalions situation.

Carla Osborne, who has a son on the Berkley team, said Humes told team parents in February that he was planning to bring Stalions on board as defensive coordinator.

“Coach had reached out and said, ‘Do you know who Connor Stalions is?’” Osborne said. “I’m like, ‘No, I don’t.’ He’s like, ‘Don’t Google him. Just let me tell you.’ Of course I had to Google him.”

Despite the headlines about Stalions and the Michigan sign-stealing scandal, Osborne said most of the team parents supported hiring him. Parents were excited by the prospect of hiring a military veteran who’d worked on the coaching staff at Michigan, Osborne said.

“We hadn’t won a game all last season,” Osborne said. “We have a whole new coaching staff. Why don’t we give our kids this great opportunity to have somebody who has been on the sidelines at a Big Ten school?”

District higher-ups ultimately overruled the coach’s attempt to hire Stalions, concerned about the negative attention that could be generated by the NCAA investigation. In a series of increasingly strident emails, Stalions refused to relinquish his position while district officials claimed he’d never been hired in the first place.

The emails do not show who ultimately nixed Stalions’ hiring. But by March 5, the decision had been made. Horn informed Stalions and Humes and recounted their reactions in an email to superintendent Scott Francis the following day.

“I told them that we had concerns with his background, and that we as a district do not feel like it is the right time for him to be on the staff,” Horn wrote.

There was one problem: Stalions believed he’d already been hired. And he wasn’t going to give up the job without a fight.

Horn cautioned the superintendent that Stalions and Humes were upset. Stalions already was working with the team, and players were under the impression that he would be part of the staff. After learning that Stalions’ hiring hadn’t been approved, Horn wrote, Humes spoke with players’ parents to share the news.

Christopher Sandoval, the district’s deputy superintendent of schools and human resources, expressed concern about Humes’ message to parents.

“I sense that the Coach may have overshared and told parents that he wanted to hire Connor and that we said no,” Sandoval wrote.

Humes did not respond to email requests for comment. In an email to The Athletic, Jessica Stilger, director of communications for Berkley Schools, said assistant coaches are hired on the recommendation of the head coach, who submits his recommendations to the athletic director. The names are then referred to the human resources office for review, Stilger said, and sent to Edustaff for processing.

“Our decision not to continue the Edustaff contract for Mr. Stalions was based on him not being a good fit for the program,” Stilger said.

Upon learning he wouldn’t be hired, Stalions contacted the district superintendent for clarification. Sandoval emailed other administrators to say he would respond to Stalions with a “very generic” message that his skills and qualifications weren’t a good match for the position.

“Thank you for reaching out to Superintendent Francis yesterday,” Sandoval wrote to Stalions later that day. “After several conversations with Mr. Horn regarding this matter, it appears that there has been some misinformation given to you regarding the football coaching position. My sincere apologies. I can certainly understand why Mr. Horn’s call to you yesterday was both confusing and upsetting.

“In general, candidates are selected for positions after consideration of their qualifications and experiences to the specific needs of our schools/programs. Thank you for your interest in Berkley Schools and best wishes to you.”

Stalions did not go quietly. About 30 minutes later, he responded to Sandoval and said he’d been working with players for several weeks and that Horn, Humes and principal Andrew Meloche had all confirmed his hiring. He included a screenshot from Edustaff that showed he had been approved for the position.

“With that being said,” Stalions wrote, “am I being fired? If I am being fired, I will need justification for termination in writing.”

Sandoval forwarded Stalions’ email to the superintendent and Meloche, the Berkley principal.

“I’ve never even talked to this guy,” Meloche responded.

The news that Stalions had been working with players for several weeks prompted consternation among the administrators. The blame appeared to fall on Horn, the athletic director.

“(Stalions’) background check was completed last week so if it’s true that he has been interacting with our kids for three weeks, it will be another ding on Taylor,” Sandoval wrote to Meloche.

Two days passed. Stalions emailed Sandoval and cheerfully informed him that, since he had not received a formal termination notice, he planned to continue working with the team.

“I’m really looking forward to continuing to install the defense with the players,” Stalions wrote. “Thank you again, for giving me the opportunity to coach here at Berkley High School. I look forward to being part of the program’s turnaround. Go Bears!”

In the following days, Stalions softened his stance. He emailed Sandoval to say it had become clear, through conversations with “many individuals in the community” that “the Berkley Administration does not wish for me to serve in a paid position.” Instead, Stalions offered to stay on as a volunteer.

Sandoval thanked Stalions for the offer and attached a volunteer release form but advised he would only be allowed to volunteer once the NCAA investigation was complete and Stalions had been cleared of wrongdoing.

Stalions argued he’d already passed a background check and filled out the necessary paperwork to be hired in a paid position. The offer to volunteer, he said, was made with the assumption that he’d already been approved.

“If that process is not as smooth as I assumed, then I am remaining as an employee,” he wrote. “Until I hear back from you, I will remain as the Defensive Coordinator.”

Sandoval fired back an email that afternoon.

“You are not, nor have you ever been, an employee of Berkley School District,” he wrote.

Stalions emailed Sandoval again to ask why his Edustaff profile listed his employment status as “active.” Two days later, he sent another email requesting an in-person meeting. Humes and Horn met with him in person, Stalions wrote, and did more due diligence “than the local and national media did (and definitely more than the NCAA, if what you’re claiming is true and they are actually investigating).” Sandoval did not respond.

Four days later, Sandoval and his executive assistant received a missive of roughly 1,500 words from Stalions. Stalions claimed that district officials were portraying him as “media hungry” and suggested that the superintendent was “too scared” to meet with him in person. He also claimed to have control over media coverage of the situation.

“The local and national media wants access to me since I’ve never done anything with the media,” he wrote. “The meaningful media members aren’t going to write a story if I ask them not to.”

Reached by phone this week, Stalions declined to comment.

Stalions closed the email by appealing to the plight of the Berkley players in limbo without a defensive coordinator. “This needs to be resolved one way or the other ASAP,” he wrote. “For the kids.”

Sandoval forwarded the email to several people but did not respond. A Freedom of Information Act request produced no other correspondence between Stalions and district officials.

Roughly 80 percent of the team parents signed a petition in favor of Stalions’ hiring, Osborne said, and the petition was presented at a meeting with district officials. It was clear that the officials weren’t going to change their minds, Osborne said, and the parents relented for fear that their efforts might cause problems for Humes.

“We felt if we kept pushing, we were going to jeopardize our coach,” Osborne said.

Not long after Stalion’s hiring at Berkley fell through, an acquaintance put him in touch with McMichael, the father of former Michigan recruit Jeremiah Beasley and the new coach at Mumford. Stalions agreed to join the staff as a volunteer defensive coordinator in May or early June, McMichael said.

Stalions is set to coach his first game Aug. 29, two days after the Netflix documentary premieres. Despite the history of controversy, McMichael didn’t feel he was tempting fate by adding Stalions to his staff.

“As a person, he’s intense when it comes to football,” McMichael said. “When he’s away from football, he’s just a regular guy.”

The Athletic’s Katie Strang contributed to this report.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photo: Adam Cairns / Columbus Dispatch / USA Today)

The piece in question was a road Yankees jersey said to be worn by Babe Ruth in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, the day of the Bambino’s “called shot” against the Cubs at Wrigley Field.

According to Robinson, the company conducted its standard three-round research process and came away with a verdict: Per their standards, it was not a match.

The story of Ruth’s “called shot” — and the decades of debate it inspired — remains one of the most famous moments in baseball history. But the tale of the jersey he may have been wearing that day is almost as fascinating. It has also been a subject of discussion for years, researched by jersey experts and amateur historians, and analyzed using cutting-edge methods. On Saturday, the jersey is expected to become the most expensive piece of game-worn sports memorabilia in history, fetching close to $20 million or more at a Heritage Auction. The previous record was held by a Michael Jordan 1998 NBA Finals jersey that sold for nearly $10.1 million in 2022.

But the decision by Resolution Photomatching — one of the leaders in the industry — has offered a sliver of doubt, creating a stir in collector’s circles and offering a window into the world of photomatching, where private companies play referee in the high-stakes world of memorabilia auctions, increasing an item’s value with a simple yes. In an interview last week, Chris Ivy, the director of sports auctions at Heritage, said it was “unfortunate that a company like Resolution would want to come out and say something like that.”

“We’re 100 percent confident that this jersey is an authentic 1932 Babe Ruth game-worn jersey,” he said, “and we’re 100 percent confident that it’s the jersey he was wearing in game three of the 1932 World Series for his ‘called shot.’”

Robinson, who founded Resolution in 2016, sees his company’s ruling as “upholding the standards of photomatching in general.” But multiple other photomatching companies — including MeiGray, an industry rival — have declared the jersey a match. The evidence — the photos, details and conclusions — is readily available at the item’s Heritage Auction listing. But for many in the industry, it raised questions about how much uncertainty is acceptable. How much doubt can be tolerated when the price tag might reach $30 million?

In the years after the 1932 World Series, the jersey Ruth wore during Game 3 disappeared. The era of instant authentication was decades away. The National Baseball Hall of Fame did not yet exist. The jersey — made with heavy gray flannel that weighed around seven ounces and featuring midnight navy felt that spelled out “New York” — was not an iconic piece of American history. It was just laundry.

Until one day in 1990, when a road Yankees jersey was found in Florida.

One thing that is not in dispute: Babe Ruth hit two home runs in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series. The first came against Cubs starter Charlie Root in the first inning with two runners on. The second is perhaps the most famous in baseball history. It came in the top of the fifth with nobody on and the score tied 4-4. Root, who won 15 games that year, was still on the mound.

It had been a heated series. New York players were furious that Cubs infielder Mark Koenig — a former member of the Yankees’ “Murderer’s Row” — was voted to receive only a half-share of the World Series bonus. “We were givin’ them (the Cubs) hell about how cheap they were,” Ruth later told The Chicago Daily News.

What happened next is still a matter of some debate. When the count reached 2-2, the United Press wrote that “Ruth motioned to the Cubs’ dugout that he was going to hit one out of the park.” The New York Daily News, meanwhile, said that Ruth “merely held up two fingers to the Cubs’ dugout to show that there was still another pitch coming to him.”

In the only surviving footage from the game, Ruth can be seen motioning toward the Cubs’ dugout along the third-base line. “I didn’t point to any spot,” Ruth would say later, according to the Chicago Daily News. “But as long as I’d called the first two strikes on myself, I had to go through with it.”

Ruth, of course, understood the power of myth, and once the story had legs, he spent years repeating all manner of versions. The embellishments often came from teammates.

“All of us players could see it was a helluva good story,” Bill Dickey, the Yankees catcher, told The Washington Post’s Shirley Povich, according to the columnist’s memoir, “All These Mornings.” “So we just made an agreement not to bother straightening out the facts.”

Ruth did hit a towering home run. The Yankees won the World Series in four games. What happened to his jersey, however, was an even bigger mystery. That is, until a well-known collector named Andy Imperato purchased an old road Yankees jersey from a woman in Florida around 1990. According to the official story, the woman’s father had received the jersey from Ruth after a round of golf. Imperato turned around and sold the jersey to another private collector for $150,000. (Imperato did not respond to multiple requests from The Athletic.)

In 1999, the jersey was consigned back to Grey Flannel Auctions — where Imperato was a co-founder — and advertised for auction as a 1930 Ruth road uniform. It sold for $284,000 and was eventually loaned to the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore. When the jersey returned to Grey Flannel again in 2005 the company elected to do additional research, which is how it became touted as the uniform Ruth was wearing on Oct. 1, 1932, the day of the “called shot.”

The change led to questions in the baseball community. Marc Okkonen, an amateur uniform maven turned author, studied the evidence around the jersey and concluded that it “had to have been worn by the Bambino when he connected with his famous ‘called shot.’” Others, including Michael Heffner, the president of Lelands, expressed measured skepticism. It was just as difficult to prove it wasn’t the jersey as to confirm it was. (“This memorabilia business is a racket,” Bob Feller, the famously crusty Cleveland ace, told The New York Daily News.) Nevertheless, the price soared. It sold for $940,000 to Richard C. Angrist, an ophthalmologist from New Jersey, who later loaned the jersey to the Yankees for a public display at the team’s museum.

Angrist had grown up a devoted Mets fan but diversified his interests when, in the 1980s, he started collecting baseballs signed by Hall of Famers. The Mets delivered nostalgia; the Yankees provided terrific ROI. By 2019, he had spent more than a decade trying to further corroborate the authenticity of the road Ruth jersey through various means. In the only public interview he has done on his collection — given to an ophthalmologist professional society — Angrist said he used “the services of a two-time Emmy award-winning producer, editor, director, and videographer” to help authenticate his items. (Angrist could not be reached for comment, and Heritage would not confirm the seller of the Ruth jersey.)

In 2008, Angrist paid to have Dave Grob, the policy director at Memorabilia Evaluation and Research Services, re-evaluate the jersey. After studying the evidence, Grob believed it was “most likely the one and the same.”

But the rise of photomatching — the practice of side-by-side analysis by experts — as an industry standard left him with another avenue for authentication. So he submitted the jersey to Resolution for the first time in 2019. Resolution had been founded by Robinson, who grew up in the Seattle area collecting game-used bats by Mariners players like Mark McLemore and Bret Boone. He had come across the concept of photomatching on internet message boards that concerned memorabilia, and when he graduated from the University of Washington in 2016, he saw a void in the emerging market.

The Resolution method consists of a three-round process that incorporates an 11-person team, more than 35 image databases and what Robinson calls a “comparison analysis process.” The approach relies on identifying characteristics on the item and the photos that are, in Robinson’s words, “definitively identical and definitively unique” — such as pinstripes, stitching patterns or stains. If the lettering alignment on a jersey is the same for each player on a team, then that cannot be deemed a “unique characteristic” and cannot be used to determine a match. The method eschews what Robinson terms a “process of elimination” analysis, where experts rule out jerseys.

Resolution has matched items going back to the early 20th century, including a Ruth bat and two Ty Cobb items. It scored one of its biggest marketing victories when it matched an aviator helmet that once belonged to Amelia Earhart. (It sold for $825,000 at a Heritage Auction.) The company charges one fee for its process and an additional premium if it finds a match, a point that Robinson emphasizes. When Resolution returned a “no match” verdict on the Ruth jersey in 2019, it was sacrificing additional revenue. And when Angrist submitted the item to Resolution again in 2021 and 2022, the company came back with the same ruling.

“We came to the same conclusion each time it was submitted after re-analyzing all of the characteristics each time,” Robinson said.

Ruth shakes hands with Lou Gehrig after hitting a home run in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series. (Bettman/Getty Images)

It’s not uncommon for high-end collectors to receive a “no match” from the leading photomatch companies. In the case of the Ruth jersey, the decision would have remained an industry secret, but Angrist took the jersey to End-to-End, a new photomatching company started by Blake Panarisi, a 2017 graduate of San Diego State who had worked in data research and analytics. Panarisi sees the art as “a variation of image classification,” which he utilized in the business world. The company returned a match on the jersey, and eventually, so did MeiGray, a firm with a longer track record. (Earlier this year, Panarisi moved to Professional Sports Authenticator, which started a photomatching department and also matched the jersey.)

In an April letter to Angrist from Jim Montague, vice president of MeiGray Authenticated, and Stu Oxenhorn, the company’s director of vintage, the company said the “jersey was photo-matched to two Getty Images (photos) and a photo from The Chicago Daily News showing Ruth standing at the dugout with Lou Gehrig and Joe McCarthy. The photos were taken both prior and during Game 3 of the World Series on October 1, 1932, at Wrigley Field in Chicago.”

The discrepancy between the rulings stemmed from characteristics — in this case, the alignment of letters on the front in relation to buttons — that MeiGray and others used to make their calls. Resolution found that those characteristics were identical to those on other Yankee jerseys from that year, which meant that they were not “definitively unique.” Upon prompting from Heritage, Resolution said it provided “a brief Letter of Opinion detailing the characteristics in player images that showed some level of promise,” which is included on the listing page. Robinson said it was not the first time that another company came to a different conclusion after Resolution failed to match an item.

“We have often felt heavy pressure from some of our most powerful clients to stay silent in these situations,” Robinson said in a press release in late July. “But in this situation, we felt like we had to be open.”

Resolution’s history with the Ruth jersey first became public after reporter Darren Rovell inquired earlier this year. But Robinson said the company had planned to issue a statement about its earlier rulings, citing the importance of the item. The ensuing conversation over the jersey has underscored a larger argument about the standards of photomatching, which are determined by the companies themselves.

“It’s part of the process of photomatching,” Panarisi said. “It’s really an opinion-based service, when you look at it. But there are hard facts to back that opinion.”

Major League Baseball, which operates an authenticator program, does not use photomatching, a league official told The Athletic. It relies solely on on-site employees, who issue stickers to game-used balls, bats and jerseys. Robinson remains hopeful that the questions over the Ruth jersey will benefit the photomatching industry in the long run. As of Wednesday afternoon, the highest bid was at $18.12 million, including a buyer’s premium.

“We’ve heard from a lot of our top auction house clients and individual clients in the last couple weeks,” Robinson said. “They’ve been really supportive of our standards and openness, which has been very encouraging.”

Heritage Auctions has kept relying on Resolution, too. Another item for sale this month is a 1954 game-worn Hank Aaron jersey from his rookie season. The item was photomatched by Resolution and the Heritage listing includes the following disclaimer: “The most ironclad assurance of authenticity is delivered by the good folks at Resolution Photomatching.”

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(Top photo of Babe Ruth with Ping Bodie: Bettmann via Getty Images)