by Julian Spivey As a child it didn’t take long to figure out how great Henry Aaron was. He was the first name I’d find alphabetically in my Baseball Encyclopedia, back before David Aardsma came along. It just felt right that Hank came first. He was first all-time in baseball history in home runs and RBI, after all. And the encyclopedia showed that he played for my team – the Atlanta Braves – for almost the entirety of his career (beginning with the team when they played in Milwaukee). That was enough to interest a young boy into finding out as much as he could about the man, they called The Hammer. When I was young – probably junior high, maybe early years of high school – I’d wake up early before having to go to school (or maybe it was summer) and flip on the living room television to ESPN Classic, which at that time showed truly remarkable classic sports programming like the 1960 syndicated show “Home Run Derby,” which was hosted by Mark Scott and I find myself dumbfounded now to realize only 26 episodes in 1960. Scott had died of a heart attack at 45 and the producers just decided to end the show. This was a precursor to the Home Run Derby we know of now during All-Star Week where today’s sluggers see how many homers they can hit in a short amount of time, but it was similar. Taped at Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field, which was built by the same designer of the iconic Wrigley Field in Chicago and sort of a downsized version of it, the show pitted the sluggers of the day in a nine-inning home run contest to see who could smash the most balls over the fence. “Home Run Derby” featured future hall of famers such as Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, Al Kaline, Harmon Killebrew, Eddie Matthews, Frank Robinson and Duke Snider, as well as many other players of the era. The winner of the game would receive a check for $2000 and be invited back the next week to face a new contestant and could receive $500 bonuses along the way for consecutive homers hit. Nobody was better at the baseball game show than Henry Aaron, who appeared a record seven times (with a 6-1 record) and won a record $13,500 on the show (keep in mind this was back in the day when ballplayers didn’t have multi-million dollar contracts they did today, so they likely pocketed the money). I obviously never got a chance to see Aaron play baseball, as he retired 11 years before my birth, but my parents had the grand experience of seeing him play both on TV and in person growing up as children in Georgia. So, getting to see Aaron’s sweet swing on “Home Run Derby,” was mesmerizing for me, but the thing I remember most all these years later was that gigantic smile he had. When I read his autobiography, I Had a Hammer, written with Lonnie Wheeler, sometime shortly after that I was fascinated by the man who grew up hitting bottle caps with a broomstick bat in his Deep South segregated hometown of Mobile, Ala. back before Jackie Robinson had integrated Major League Baseball in 1947 and how he had this dream of becoming a major leaguer despite not even being able to afford an actual bat and glove. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it, it’s my all-time favorite sports autobiography. But it’s not all Hank’s gigantic smile and fun. When he kept hitting home run after home run throughout the ‘60s he began to near the greatest record in all of sports – Babe Ruth’s MLB home run record of 714 homers. In ’66 the Braves had moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta, to become the first baseball team in the Deep South and Aaron eight years later Aaron would have a chance to break the record of this white American icon in a land where the Ku Klux Klan would terrorize folks that looked like him. He received more hate mail than anybody in America likely had since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., six years prior. He received letters from people calling him every racial slur known to man and promises of being in the stands with rifles waiting to gun him down on the basepaths if he dared to break this most sacred of records. Aaron kept these letters the remainder of his life, even after he had given all of his baseball memorabilia to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. He published many of these hate letters in I Had a Hammer, and they’re among the vilest things you’ll ever see in your life. This is when Hank Aaron, the greatest baseball player to ever play the game in my mind, became Hank Aaron, the great American hero and one of the strongest men I’d ever heard about. Was he scared? Sure. I’m sure he was scared to death, especially when told of threats to kidnap his daughter. I’m sure he thought there was a good chance he could be murdered before having the opportunity to break Ruth’s record. But it didn’t stop him from the one thing he dreamed of doing back when he was a kid hitting bottle caps on the muddy streets of Mobile. On April 8, 1974, Aaron’s Braves were facing the Los Angeles Dodgers and in front of 53,775 people the largest crowd in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium’s history, Aaron hit a fourth-inning pitch from Dodgers hurler Al Downing into the Braves bullpen and broke the record. I’m sure there were gasps around the ballpark and the world with folks watching from home as two young white men jumped onto the field to greet Aaron as he was rounding the bases in congratulations, reminding us that not everybody despised seeing Aaron break the record and it was quite a miracle they weren’t shot on sight by the FBI agent guarding Aaron, who’s hand was on his .38 the entire time. It should’ve been the greatest moment of Aaron’s career – and I’m sure he would admit it was – but in the moment he was just relieved it was over and he had survived the entire thing. One of those damning moments where White America couldn’t truly let a Black man celebrate the crowning achievement of his career and really of sports history because he was afraid, they’d take his life from him for doing so. Aaron would finish out the ’74 season with the Braves, before moving back to Milwaukee to finish out his career with two seasons with the Brewers of the American League. He would go on to serve in high-up positions with the Braves organization for years after his playing career and would always be a shining example of a human being and standing up for the way things ought to be in this country. He’d never forget the pain of those letters and in 2014 drew more for an honest assessment of the way the world hadn’t changed enough in the 40 years since he broke the record when he told the USA Today: “We have moved in the right direction, and there have been improvements, but we still have a long ways to go in the country. The bigger difference is that back then they had hoods. Now they have neckties and starched shirts.” Aaron was never afraid to speak his mind. That in addition to the supreme way in which he played my all-time favorite sport have always made him a hero to me. He’s going to be missed, but his achievements are never going to be forgotten.
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