Hank Aaron

Hank Aaron
Professional baseball may never see another slugger as great as Hank Aaron. Aaron's career record of 755 home runs in 23 years is by far the best in the history of the game. He also holds top honors for runs batted in and total bases and has been a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame since 1982. Aaron was a highly regarded but relatively unknown star of the Atlanta Braves (prior to 1966, the Milwaukee Braves) for nearly two decades before he became an American hero in 1973 and 1974. It was during those seasons that he chased, and finally surpassed, Babe Ruth's famed career home run record. When Aaron hit his 715th home run on April 8, 1974, amidst a near-melee in the Braves' home ballpark, he achieved a "superhuman accomplishment, as mysterious and remote as Stonehenge, and certain to stand forever," to quote Tom Buckley in the New York Times Magazine. Remarkably, that milestone came not at the end, but rather in the middle of an extraordinary baseball career.

Stardom never rested easily on Aaron's shoulders. By nature a reserved individual, he chafed under the public accolade that accompanied his record-breaking performance. In fact, Aaron spent the last years of his playing career in a constant state of uneasiness. Breaking the home run record brought him legions of new fans, but it also exposed an ugly vein of racism in society. As he edged past Ruth in the record books, Aaron faced death threats and other forms of hate from some angry whites who saw his performance as a challenge to their cherished ideas of supremacy. "What does it say of America that a man fulfills the purest of American dreams, struggling up from Jim Crow poverty to dethrone the greatest of Yankee kings ... yet feels not like a hero but like someone hunted?" asked Mike Capuzzo in Sports Illustrated. "The Home Run King is a grandfather now, and by tradition he should be lionized, a legend in the autumn of his life. But Henry Aaron takes no comfort in baseball immortality, in lore and remembrance."

Aaron was born and raised in a segregated neighborhood in Mobile, Alabama. The house where he and his seven siblings grew up did not have plumbing, electricity, or glass windows. He was born in 1934, in the midst of the Great Depression, and his parents struggled to keep ahead of the bills. Aaron's father worked at the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company. The job was steady, but so was the verbal abuse from white co-workers. Herbert Aaron rarely complained to his children, but he did encourage them to excel in school. Young Henry was a good student, but from an early age he knew he wanted to play professional baseball.

As the Braves' starting right fielder, Aaron turned in a superb rookie year. He batted .280 and hit 13 home runs in an injury-shortened season. The following year he more than doubled his home run tally, hitting 27 with a .314 average. Aaron was also an able outfielder and a threat to steal. His speed and power quickly earned him a reputation in the National League. With his help, the Braves advanced to the 1957 World Series against the New York Yankees.

Aaron still remembers a crucial home run he hit in 1957 as one of the highlights of his career. On September 24, 1957, the Braves faced the second-place St. Louis Cardinals in a game that would clinch the National League pennant for one of the teams. The score was tied 2-2 into the 11th inning. Aaron smacked a homer to win the game and the pennant for the Braves. As he rounded the bases, his teammates gathered at home plate to carry him off the field. The Braves went on that year to beat the Yankees in the World Series. Aaron hit three home runs and a triple for 7 runs batted in as the Braves took the Series in seven games.

The Braves returned to the World Series in 1958, this time losing to the Yankees. By then Aaron was a bona fide baseball star, even if he did little to promote himself. His batting average stood at .326, and he was just beginning a hitting streak that would bring him more than 30 home runs a season almost every year until 1974. Aaron--who had once feared white pitchers--was now himself an object of terror in the National League. One hurler commented that getting a fast ball past Hank Aaron was like trying to get the sun past a rooster. Another said that trying to fool him was like slapping a rattlesnake. Yet after 1958, Aaron's talents were hidden on a Braves team that failed to make postseason play year after year.

People began counting, though, as Aaron passed the ten-year mark in his playing career. Three times--in 1957, 1963, and 1966--Aaron hit 44 home runs in a season. In 1971 he smacked 47. His lowest season total before 1974 was 24, in 1964. (The average major leaguer might consider himself blessed with 18 home runs each year.) Aaron inched toward the record with a batting stance and running style that defied logic, a carryover from his self-taught youth. At the age where most major league ball players retire, he was still maintaining his superb conditioning and his unique hand-eye coordination. He played throughout the 1960s in Milwaukee and Atlanta--the Braves moved South in 1966--and, in 1973, brought his home run totals to the verge of a new record.

Media attention began to build in 1970, when Aaron became the first player to combine 3000 career hits and 500 home runs. The countdown began for a run on Ruth's record of 714 homers. By 1973 Aaron had closed the gap considerably, and at the end of that season he had 713. The fame he had never particularly courted found him. Letters--most of them congratulatory--came from all over the world. He was offered lucrative endorsement contracts from Magnavox electronics and was honored with a candy bar called "O Henry!"