RIP Henry Aaron, baseball slugger who became the greatest home run hitter in history and endured racial taunts, death threats, and kidnapping schemes to accomplish that — and did so with dignity, honor, and humility

Aaron before tying Babe Ruth's record of 714 in Riverfront Stadium, Cincinnati:    Photos AP 1974

… "Rest In Peace, Henry Aaron — though God may call you 'Hank'.”

Henry Aaron, the Braves slugger who hated to be called “Hank,” became the greatest home run hitter in history on April 8, 1974, when he blasted his 715th home run against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. 

Aaron played for 23 years, and in 1974, was 39 years old, but he still had that great power that came from his wrists that never seemed to lose their wondrous magic. 

Passing away today at the age of 86, he is remembered for his tremendous offensive feats, but he should be recalled for the honor and dignity that he displayed during that run. 

That was because a black man was pursuing a record held for about a half-century by a revered white man, Babe Ruth, the Yankees slugger. 

Started in the Negro leagues

Born into poverty in Alabama, Aaron prevailed against all odds, having to play in his early years in the Deep South where all blacks received racial taunts and abuse in the 1950s,

Playing for 23 seasons, all but his final two years with the Braves in Milwaukee and then Atlanta, Aaron was among the greatest all-around players in baseball history and one of the last major league stars to have played in the Negro leagues.

But his pursuit of Ruth’s record of 714 home runs proved a deeply troubling affair beyond the pressures of the ball field. When he hit his 715th home run, on the evening of April 8, 1974, against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, he prevailed in the face of hate mail and even death threats spewing outrage that a Black man could supplant a white baseball icon.

Richard Goldstein, “Hank Aaron, Home Run King Who Defied Racism, 

Dies at 86,” New York Times, January 22, 2021

The ball that he hit for 715

Achievements

While his home run record remains the greatest accomplishment, his consistency may have been his greatest effort, and he did so while playing second fiddle for much of his career to the flamboyant Willie Mays,

Aaron’s achievements went well beyond his home run prowess. In fact, he never hit as many as 50 homers in a single season.

He was a two-time National League batting champion and had a career batting average of .305. He was the league’s most valuable player in 1957, when the Milwaukee Braves won their only World Series championship. He was voted an All-Star in all but his first and last seasons, and he won three Gold Glove awards for his play in right field.

Aaron combined with the Hall of Fame third baseman Eddie Mathews for 863 home runs during their 13 years together on the Braves, the most ever for two teammates.

Aaron remains No. 1 in the major leagues in total bases (6,856) and runs batted in (2,297); No. 2 in at-bats (12,364), behind Pete Rose; and No. 3 in hits (3,771), behind Rose and Cobb.  He won the National League’s single-season home run title four times, though his highest total was only 47, in 1971. Matching his jersey number, he hit exactly 44 home runs in four different seasons.

Richard Goldstein, New York Times, January 22, 2021

His physical talents

His presence was not a dominating physical one, but the skills reflected his strength and mastery of hitting,

At six feet tall and 180 pounds, Aaron was hardly the picture of a slugger, but he had thick, powerful wrists, enabling him to whip the bat out of his right-handed stance with uncommon speed.

“He had great forearms and wrists,” Lew Burdette, the outstanding Braves pitcher, recalled in Danny Peary’s oral history “We Played the Game” (1994). “He could be fooled completely and be way out on his front foot, and the bat would still be back, and he’d just roll his wrists and hit the ball out of the ballpark.”

Aaron was quick on the bases and in the outfield.

“There aren’t five men faster in baseball, and no better base runner,” Bobby Bragan, Aaron’s manager in the mid-1960s, told Sports Illustrated. “If you need a base, he’ll steal it quietly. If you need a shoestring catch, he’ll make it, and his hat won’t fly off and he won’t fall on his butt. He does it like DiMaggio.”

Aaron was a keen student of pitching and kept himself in excellent shape.

“I concentrated on the pitchers,” he said in his memoir, “I Had a Hammer” (1991, with Lonnie Wheeler). “I didn’t stay up nights worrying about my weight distribution, or the location of my hands, or the turn of my hips: I stayed up thinking about the pitcher I was going to face the next day. I used to play every pitcher in my mind before I went to the ballpark.”

Richard Goldstein, New York Times, January 22, 2021

Followed Jackie Robinson

His mother wanted Henry to attend college since she thought that was the way out of poverty. However, at a young age, he realized that he had some tremendous skills that could translate into baseball success.

Henry Louis Aaron was born on Feb. 5, 1934, in Mobile, Ala., one of eight children of Herbert and Estella (Pritchett) Aaron. His father worked in shipyards. His mother joined with her husband in overseeing a close-knit family. She encouraged Henry (he never liked being called Hank, as he would customarily be known on the sports pages) to consider going to college.

In March 1948, a year after Jackie Robinson broke the modern major league color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson was in Mobile for a spring training game. Henry Aaron was in the crowd of Black youngsters who had gathered in town to hear Robinson tell them of the possibilities that would be opening to Black people.

Robinson spoke of the need to strive for a good education. But Henry, only 14 but already a talented sandlot ballplayer, cared little for his high school studies. He idolized Robinson and envisioned professional baseball as the road to escaping poverty and segregation.

Richard Goldstein, New York Times, January 22, 2021

Started in the Sally League

Opportunities were not abundant for blacks in the 1950s, and baseball players who were black had to start at the bottom, which forced Aaron to play for a baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters in his early career,

 

After beginning the 1952 season with the Clowns, Aaron was signed in June by the Braves, who were in their last season in Boston. They assigned him to play for their farm team in Eau Claire, Wis., and he was named the Northern League’s rookie of the year that season.

He was promoted in 1953 to play second base for the Jacksonville, Fla., team of the South Atlantic League, or the Sally League, becoming one of the circuit’s first five Black players.

Now he was back in the Old South.

“The whites used to yell from the stands and call us alligator bait,” Felix Mantilla, an infielder from Puerto Rico who roomed with Aaron at Jacksonville and later joined him in Milwaukee, told Howard Bryant in “The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron” (2010).  

“Jacksonville wasn’t so bad. But places like Columbus and Macon, those places were wicked.”

Richard Goldstein, New York Times, January 22, 2021

Even Kentucky’s Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner, ignored him

In his quest to overcome Ruth’s record of 714, Aaron endured racist mail and taunts at the ballparks, including threats to kidnap his children if he continued. In his later years, he spoke out about his frustration about that,

Aaron had little interest in continuing to play for the Braves after the 1974 season. He felt that notwithstanding Atlanta’s reputation as a progressive representative of the New South, he had received only tepid backing from the fans as he neared Ruth’s record. And he heard racial abuse from some fans that reminded him of his minor league days in the Sally League.

“I didn’t expect the fans to give me a standing ovation every time I stepped on the field, but I thought a few of them might come over to my side as I approached Ruth,” Aaron said in his memoir. “At the very least, I felt I had earned the right not be verbally abused and racially ravaged in my home ballpark.”

The modern civil rights movement made historic gains during Aaron’s career, but he knew that the road to equal treatment remained long.

“Any Black who thinks the same thing can’t happen today is sadly mistaken,” he told The Times in 1994. “It happens now with people in three-piece suits instead of with hoods on.”

Early on in his career, Black players were barred from hotels where white teammates stayed during spring training in Florida. Aaron joined with Bill Bruton, the Braves’ African-American center fielder, in pressing management for change, with no immediate success. 

Richard Goldstein, New York Times, January 22, 2021

Kuhn could have been present for Aaron’s 715th, but chose not to be. Aaron never forgot that. 

Henry and his wife about six years ago on the 40th anniversary of the record

Baseball should renounce Bonds’ record

While Barry Bonds eventually overcame Aaron, he did so under a cloud that continues to hover over that record because of his steroid use and the growth of his body after leaving Pittsburgh in the early 1990s,

The San Francisco Giants’ Barry Bonds surpassed Aaron’s home run record in August 2007 and went on to hit 762 homers. But many inside baseball and out considered Bonds’s achievement to be tainted by suspicions that he had used performance-enhancing drugs in what came to be known as baseball’s steroid era, when bulked-up players achieved stunning feats of slugging.

Aaron did not speak out on steroid use, but he declined to follow Bonds around the league to witness his 756th home run. When it came in San Francisco against the Washington Nationals, Aaron limited himself to a message on the stadium’s video board: “My hope today, as it was on that April evening in 1974, is that the achievement of this record will inspire others to chase their own dreams.”

Richard Goldstein, New York Times, January 22, 2021

He never criticized Bonds, still remained an honorable person.

Conclusion

Aaron’s dignity and perseverance are great lessons for any athlete, particularly for those who are black. Today, blacks dominate football and basketball, but the Hispanics have taken the road to the top in baseball, one that started with Jackie Robinson’s breaking the racial barrier in the 1940s. 

The words that I can use most to describe Aaron are honor and dignity. That is how he carried himself during the quest to reach the top, and that is how I will always remember him. 

He was elected to the MLB Hall of Fame in 1982 with 97.8 percent of the vote. Hard to figure how anyone could have voted against him, but racism still endures in America at all levels.  

Rest In Peace, Henry Aaron — though God may call you “Hank.”