PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The official nonprofit organization of the National Park Service is set to receive the largest grant in its history, a $100 million gift the fundraising group described as transformative for the country’s national parks.

The National Park Foundation, which Congress created in the 1960s to support national parks, will receive the donation from Indianapolis-based foundation Lilly Endowment Inc. The park foundation described the gift on Monday as the largest grant in history benefiting U.S. national parks.

The money will be used to address the needs of the country’s more than 400 national park sites, said Will Shafroth, president and CEO of the National Park Foundation.

The foundation hopes to announce the first round of grants stemming from the donation later this year, Shafroth said.

Exactly how the money will be utilized remains to be seen, but one of the foundation’s priorities is restoring coral reefs at Biscayne National Park in Florida, Shafroth said, while another priority is the restoration of trout species in western national parks. Those are among the foundation’s recent investments.

In addition to funding initiatives that protect fragile ecosystems and species, Shafroth said the money will also be used to create opportunities for young people to visit national parks.

“This grant will allow us to supercharge our efforts to ensure our national parks are for everyone, for generations to come,” he said.

The system’s hundreds of units include national parks, memorials, monuments, historic sites and other locations. It includes iconic national parks such as Yellowstone National Park in Montana and Yosemite National Park in California, as well as beloved sites such as the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. It also includes preserved areas that are less accessible to many people, such as Buck Island Reef National Monument in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The National Park Foundation is in the midst of its “Campaign for National Parks,” a $1 billion fundraising effort to support parks. Lilly Endowment made the gift to support that effort, said N. Clay Robbins, chair and CEO of Lilly Endowment.

“We believe the National Park Foundation’s campaign will enhance the programming in and promote the future vibrancy of our country’s marvelous system of parks, monuments and historic sites,” Robbins said.

DALLAS (AP) — The jersey Babe Ruth wore when he called his shot during the 1932 World Series, hitting a home run to center field, sold at auction early Sunday for over $24 million.

Heritage Auctions said the New York Yankee slugger’s jersey went for a record-breaking $24.12 million after a bidding war that lasted over six hours when it went on the block in Dallas. The buyer wishes to remain anonymous, Heritage said.

The amount that the jersey sold for topped fellow Yankee Mickey Mantle’s 1952 rookie card, which the Dallas-based auction house sold for $12.6 million in 2022.

Chris Ivy, Heritage’s director of sports, calls the jersey “the most significant piece of American sports memorabilia ever offered at auction.” He said in a news release that it was clear from the bidding that ”astute collectors have no doubt as to what this Ruth jersey is and what it represents.”

“The legend of Babe Ruth and the myth and mystery surrounding his ‘called shot’ are united in this one extraordinary artifact,” Ivy said.

Ruth’s famed, debated and often imitated “called shot” came as the Yankees and Chicago Cubs faced off in Game 3 of the World Series at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on Oct. 1, 1932. In the fifth inning of the heated game, Ruth made a pointing gesture while at bat and then hit the home run off Cubs pitcher Charlie Root.

“It is the most dramatic moment in World Series history, and it may be the most dramatic moment ever in all of baseball,” said Michael Gibbons, director emeritus and historian at the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore.

The Yankees won the game 7-5 and swept the Cubs the next day to win the series.

That was Ruth’s last World Series, and the “called shot” was his last home run in a World Series, said Mike Provenzale, the production manager for Heritage’s sports department.

“When you can tie an item like that to an important figure and their most important moment, that’s what collectors are really looking for,” Provenzale said.

Heritage said Ruth gave the road jersey to one of his golfing buddies in Florida around 1940 and it remained in that family for decades. Then, in the early 1990s, that man’s daughter sold it to a collector. It was then sold at auction in 2005 for $940,000 and remained in a private collection until being consigned to Heritage this year.

There’s been debate for decades over whether Ruth really called the shot. But Gibbons said there’s home movie footage of the game that shows Ruth pointing, though it’s not clear whether he’s pointing at the pitcher, center field or toward the Cubs bench. Regardless, he said, Ruth, who had a history of making predictions, clearly “said something’s going to happen on the next pitch and he made it happen.” And, he said, Ruth himself said he’d called the shot.

“We think certainly that he did call his shot,” Gibbons said.

News reel footage shows Ruth rounding the bases after the home run and making a pushing out gesture toward the Cubs bench, as if to say “I gotcha,” Gibbons said.

The “called shot,” was an extraordinary moment from a man Gibbons called “the standard-bearer for all of Major League Baseball.”

“He was always uplifting, he was something very positive for this country to root for,” Gibbons said. “Then he caps it all off by calling his shot.”

LONDON (AP) — Two weeks after organizers scrubbed Taylor Swift’s concerts in Vienna amid a foiled terror plot, the singer issued her first statement on the cancellations.

“Having our Vienna shows cancelled was devastating,” she wrote in a statement posted to Instagram on Wednesday. “The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows.”

She thanked authorities — “thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives,” she wrote — and said she waited to speak until the European leg of her Eras Tour concluded to prioritize safety.

“Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows,” she wrote.

In the wake of the cancellations, Swift’s representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Associated Press and other news organizations and her social media pages had gone dormant.

“In cases like this one, ‘silence’ is actually showing restraint, and waiting to express yourself at a time when it’s right to. My priority was finishing our European tour safely, and it’s with great relief that I can say we did that,” she added.

Concert organizer Barracuda Music had said it canceled the three-night Vienna run that would have begun Aug. 8 because the arrests made in connection to the conspiracy were too close to showtime. Authorities said a 19-year-old suspect had planned to target spectators outside the Ernst Happel Stadium with knives or homemade explosives, hoping to “kill as many people as possible.” Austrian officials said they appeared to have been inspired by the Islamic State group and al-Qaida.

That suspect and another 17-year-old were taken into custody on Aug. 6, the day before the shows were announced as canceled. A third suspect, 18, was arrested Aug. 8. The 19-year-old’s lawyer has said the allegations were “overacting at its best,” and contended Austrian authorities were “presenting this exaggeratedly” in order to get new surveillance powers.

Tens of thousands of Swifties from around the world had traveled to Vienna for the shows.

Swift’s Instagram post also commemorated the end of the European leg with a tribute to her five nights at London’s Wembley Stadium, which she said factored into her decision to wait to speak out and ultimately “felt like a beautiful dream sequence.”

“I decided that all of my energy had to go toward helping to protect the nearly half a million people I had coming to see the shows in London,” she wrote the day after her last Wembley concert. “My team and I worked hand in hand with stadium staff and British authorities every day in pursuit of that goal.”

The shows in London, the next stop scheduled after Vienna, also came on the heels of a stabbing at a Swift-themed dance class that left three little girls dead in the U.K. In a statement issued after the Southport attack, Swift said she was “just completely in shock” and “at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families.” News outlets reported that Swift met with some of the survivors backstage in London.

The record-smashing tour is on hiatus until October, when it resumes in Miami.