October 6, 1926: Game 4 of the World Series is held at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Someone got a message to New York Yankees superstar Babe Ruth, asking him to hit a home run for a sick kid in a hospital.
He hit one. It came in the 1st inning, off St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Flint Rhem. (His name was Charles Flint Rhem, but he went by his middle name.)
He hit another, in the 3rd inning, also off Rhem.
And he hit another, in the 6th inning, off Herman "Hi" Bell. It was the 1st time a player had hit 3 home runs in a World Series game.
Ruth, who had 4 RBIs on the day, did have his chances to hit a 4th homer. He drew a walk in the 5th inning, drew another walk in the 8th, and was on deck when the Yankees made their last out in the 9th. Despite all his accomplishments in baseball, he never hit 4 home runs in a game. In fact, only 1 Yankee has ever done that: Lou Gehrig, in 1932. On this day, Gehrig went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.
Billy Southworth, later to manage the Cardinals to 3 straight Pennants, went 3-for-5. Rogers Hornsby, also the Cardinals' manager this season, went 2-for-5 with an RBI. But despite allowing 5 runs on 14 hits, Waite Hoyt went the distance, and the Yankees won, 10-5, and tied up the Series.
The boy's name was Johnny Sylvester. That Summer, he was staying at a rented house in Bay Head, on the Jersey Shore, when he was thrown from his horse, and the horse kicked him in the head. He was taken back to his family home in Essex Fells, New Jersey, but the injury got worse, and he developed osteomyelitis in his skull. (Twenty years later, while playing high school football, Mickey Mantle was injured and developed osteomyelitis in his ankle, and nearly lost his leg before he could begin his Hall of Fame career with the Yankees.)
Once Sylvester's story became connected with Ruth, the story was mixed up, as what he had depended on who was telling the story. It's usually been written as "blood poisoning." The confusion led some later observers to say the whole story was a hoax. It wasn't.
It's also not clear whose idea it was to contact Ruth: Johnny himself, his father, or his uncle. But the message did get to Ruth, who sent a package to the Sylvester house, including two balls, each autographed by the one of the entire teams involved in the World Series. Next to his own autograph, Ruth wrote, "I'll knock a homer for you on Wednesday." Which he did. (So who were the other 2 homers for?)
After the game, Johnny's condition improved. The Yankees' condition didn't: The Cardinals won the Series in 7 games. After the Series, Ruth visited the Sylvester home, and Johnny told him, "I'm sorry the Yanks lost."
When Johnny's story hit the national news, he also received an autographed football from Red Grange, and an autographed tennis racket from Bill Tilden. That was half of "The Golden Age of Sports" right there. I wonder if he ever met boxing's Jack Dempsey, hockey's Howie Morenz or golf's Bobby Jones?
At any rate, Johnny grew up, graduated from Yale University, served as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and met Ruth one more time, in 1948. This time, it was as a publicity stunt in connection with the film The Babe Ruth Story, starring William Bendix in a ridiculous account of Ruth's life. At this meeting, it was Ruth who was sick, with throat cancer, and died later in the year.
Sylvester settled in Garden City, Long Island, New York, and ran a company that manufactured packing machinery. He lived until 1990, age 74, and was survived by a son and 3 grandchildren. In 2014, a ball that Ruth gave him was sold at auction for $250,641.
The legend of the Babe and the sick kid has gotten into every movie made about the Babe. The truth is great enough, is Ruthian enough.
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October 10, 1926, as Ruth said, was a Wednesday. That was the only baseball game played that day, it was midweek for football, it was too soon for the hockey season to begin, and pro basketball was strictly minor-league at the time. (Hence, no basketball player is ever included with Ruth, Grange, et al. in "The Golden Age of Sports.) So there were no other scores on this historic day.
