Babe Ruth was that rare breed of baseball player who combined a high hitting percentage with extraordinary strength to lift many of them into the bleachers. And Babe Ruth knew it: his outsize persona extended off the field. Famously, he was asked once by a reporter what he thought of commanding a bigger salary than President Herbert Hoover, and replied “I know, but I had a better year than he did.” He played in countless radio and television shows during his career, and after his retirement, as his health was failing, a Hollywood movie was rushed into release to tell the tale of the man himself.

On this day, July 26, in 1948 Babe Ruth briefly left the hospital to attend a premiere of The Babe Ruth Story at the Astor theater in New York. A crowd surrounding the theatre cheered at the slugger as he gave his imprimatur to the film.

The critics were not as kind, and particularly faulting the film with overdramatizing Babe Ruth’s “called shot.” In the film version, he calmly stands at the plate taking the first two pitches for strikes and gesturing to the Chicago Cubs bench that was taunting him. The next pitch he hit for the home run, and the magic of the moment, as broadcast on the radio, helped heal a little boy. The real Babe Ruth took several balls in between the first two strikes, and his gestures were more ambiguous. The story of his called shot was given legs only several days later by a couple of New York newspapers.