Three home runs in one World Series game, the first time it had been done, on the afternoon a promise to a sick child was in every newspaper in New York.
The boy
Johnny Sylvester was eleven years old and living in Essex Fells, New Jersey. In the autumn of 1926 he was seriously ill and confined to bed following an injury. The exact diagnosis varies between sources.
A family connection reached the New York Yankees ahead of the World Series against the St Louis Cardinals.
The package
What arrived included baseballs signed by players from both teams and a note from Babe Ruth. The version that has come down through a century of retelling has Ruth promising to hit a home run for him.
Game four
On 6 October 1926 at Sportsman's Park, Ruth homered in the first inning, again in the third, and again in the sixth. The third was reported as an enormous strike over the right field pavilion.
Three home runs in a World Series game had never happened before. Ruth repeated it himself in 1928, and it has been achieved only a small number of times since by anyone.
The Yankees lost the Series in seven games.
What is solid and what is not
This is one of the most retold stories in American sport, and retelling has done what retelling does. Some versions place the boy at death's door with a specific deathbed request. Some invert the outcome entirely.
What the record supports: a real boy, a real serious illness, a real package of signed balls, a real visit from Ruth after the Series, and a photograph of the two of them together. What it does not support is a precise transcript of a promise.
We would rather give you the version that survives scrutiny, because the surviving version is remarkable enough.
Afterwards
Sylvester recovered. He served in the Navy in the Second World War, ran a manufacturing company, and died in 1990 at seventy-four, having spent six decades being asked about one week in October.
Why it goes on a wall
Because the most famous player in the country, in the middle of the biggest series of the year, answered a letter about a sick child, and then went out and produced a game nobody had ever produced before.
He promised one and hit three.