CHICAGO — In the mid-1990s, shortly before he died, late WGN broadcaster Jack Brickhouse passed along a vintage piece of Americana to WGN Morning News anchor Larry Potash. In 1945, the Hall of Fame broadcaster snuck a microphone into an interview with Babe Ruth at Comiskey Park. It was 1945, just three years before Ruth’s death, and “The Bambino” was on the South Side to talk about a new baseball league for kids.

The Babe’s remarks weren’t supposed to be recorded and wouldn’t have been had it not been for Jack Brickhouse. And had Larry Potash not run into Mr. Brickhouse that 1990’s day at WGN, the memory you can listen to in the player above might have been lost forever.