Aaron, Hank 1934–

Hank Aaron 1934–

Retired professional baseball player, business executive

Breaking the Color Barrier

One Team, Many Records

Fame in a Racist Society

An Executive and Spokesperson

Sources

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.”

Breaking the Color Barrier

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

At a Glance…

Born Henry Louis Aaron, February 5,1934, in Mobile, AL; son of Herbert (a shipyard worker) and Estella Aaron; married Barbara Lucas, October 6,1953 (divorced); married Billye Suber, November 1973; children (first marriage): Gail, Hank, Lary, Gary (deceased), Dorinda; (second marriage) Ceci.

Professional baseball player, 1952–76; baseball executive, 1976—; vice-president with Turner Broadcasting System, 1990—. Began baseball career with Indianapolis Clowns (Negro League), 1952; joined Milwaukee Braves organization (later became Atlanta Braves), 1952; made parent team, 1954. Traded to Milwaukee Brewers, 1975. Returned to Braves as vice-president for player development, 1976–89; named senior vice-president, 1989. Active in numerous charity concerns, including Easter Seal Society and Hank Aaron Scholarship Fund. Author, with Lonnie Wheeler, of autobiography I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story, Harper, 1991.

Selected awards: Spingarn Medal from the NAACP, 1976. Holds lifetime records for most home runs (755), most runs batted in (2297), most long hits (1477), and most total bases (6856). Named to National League All-Star roster 24 times; named National League Most Valuable Player, 1957; elected to Baseball Hall of Fame, 1982.

Addresses: c/o Atlanta Braves, P.O. Box 4064, Atlanta, GA 30302.

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.

Aaron spent most of his spare time at Carver Recreational Park, a neighborhood playground a block from his home. There he played sandlot baseball, essentially teaching himself the game. When his parents realized that he was intent on pursuing sports, they advised him to “play a lot better than the white boy,” according to Capuzzo.

When Aaron was a young teenager, professional baseball slowly began to integrate with the arrival of Jackie Robinson, the first black to play in the major leagues. While Robinson was enduring taunts and death threats in the majors, Aaron was making a name for himself in Mobile. His high school did not have a baseball team, so he played in local amateur and semi-pro leagues. Early teams included the Pritchett Athletics and the Mobile Black Bears.

Aaron was recruited by the Black Bears to help win an exhibition game against a professional Negro League team, the Indianapolis Clowns. The young man’s talents attracted the attention of Syd Pollock, the Clowns’ owner. In 1952, the Clowns offered Aaron a contract—$200 a month to play in the Negro League during baseball season. He was thrilled, and at that time he thought the salary was a small fortune. Armed with two sandwiches and two dollars his mother gave him, he embarked for Indianapolis by train. Capuzzo wrote of Aaron in those days: “He was skinny as a toothpick, batted cross-handed because no one had told him not to, [and] feared white pitchers because he’d heard they were a superior race.”

After only a short time in the Negro Leagues, Aaron was recruited by the Milwaukee Braves. He joined the Braves’ system in 1952 and was sent to the minor leagues. There he became one of the first black players to break the color line in the Deep South—a dangerous proposition in the last, desperate days of segregation that was legally enforced by Jim Crow laws. After one season in Wisconsin, Aaron found himself playing for a Jacksonville, Florida team in the South Atlantic League. Fans insulted him constantly, and even some of his teammates hurled racial slurs at him. Hotels and restaurants were closed to him because he was black. The situation was only tolerable because Aaron showed such talent, and because he was young. “I was only 19 in the [South Atlantic] League,” he told Sports Illustrated. “It was like sending a 19-year-old into war. What did I know about death? What did I know about the world? It didn’t matter so much then. Later, it mattered.”

Somehow the heightened tension inspired Aaron. During his year with the South Atlantic League, he led the circuit in batting average, doubles, runs scored, total bases and runs batted in. He was voted League Most Valuable Player for 1953. The following year, a key injury opened a roster spot with the Braves in Milwaukee. Aaron won the position in spring training and joined the team for the 1954 season.

One Team, Many Records

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!” Charities like the Easter Seals Foundation and Big Brothers vied for his time. His second marriage in November of 1973 made international headlines. Aaron could not bask in the glory, however. He was afraid for his life, and the lives of his children.

Fame in a Racist Society

Among the 930,000 pieces of mail Aaron received in 1973 were numerous hate letters. One, printed in Sports Illustrated, read: “Dear Hank Aaron, I got orders to do a bad job on you if and when you get 10 from B. Ruth record. A guy in Atlanta and a few in Miami Fla don’t seem to care if they have to take care of your family too.” Many others contained similar threats. A few threatened Aaron’s college-age daughter. Under siege, Aaron hired a personal bodyguard. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated many of the threats and uncovered still other plots to harm the ballplayer.

On the surface Aaron seemed undaunted by the persecution. If anything, the hate mail increased his desire to break the record and set a new one that no one could possibly surpass. Aaron hit 40 home runs in 1973 and began the 1974 season by tying the Ruth record during an Opening Day game in Cincinnati. Sports Illustrated correspondent Ron Fimrite commented: “Through the long weeks of on-field pressure and mass media harassment, [he] had expressed no more agitation than a man brushing aside a housefly. Aaron had labored for most of his 21-year career in shadows cast by more flamboyant superstars, and if he was enjoying his newfound celebrity, he gave no hint of it. He seemed to be nothing more than a man trying to do his job and live a normal life in the presence of incessant chaos.”

The chaos came to a climax on April 8, 1974 in a home game in Atlanta. Aaron hit a monstrous home run off Dodger pitcher Al Downing, and the fans went wild. Aaron was greeted at the plate by his teammates and his mother. Play was suspended for fifteen minutes while he acknowledged the roar of the crowd. During the following weeks, he received more than 20,000 telegrams.

An Executive and Spokesperson

Aaron left the Atlanta Braves at the end of the 1974 season and finished his playing days with the Milwaukee Brewers. He retired in 1976 with a record 755 home runs and 2297 runs batted in. One week later he began a new phase of his career, as director of player development for the Braves. His duties included scouting new prospects for the team and overseeing the coaching of minor leaguers. The farm system Aaron directed provided the Braves with such talents as Dale Murphy, Tom Glavine, Mark Lemke, and Andres Thomas. Aaron worked hard to improve the Braves’ chances of pennant contention, and he was successful. Once a forgotten franchise, the Atlanta Braves today offer one of the strongest teams in the National League.

Aaron was one of the first blacks hired in a major league front office. Throughout his tenure with the Braves’ management, he has called for more black participation in the business end of baseball. The subject of minority hiring is still a priority for Aaron. He told Sports Illustrated: “They say we [African Americans] don’t have the ‘mental necessities’ to sit behind the desk, we just have God-given talent. But, man, I had to work hard, too. I had to think. I didn’t have any more natural talent than Ted Williams or Joe DiMaggio. I played the game 23 years, and that tells me I had to study some pitchers pretty well. But no—I was a dumb s.o.b. It’s racism. These things really anger me.”

The Home Run King gets angry, too, when the subject turns to his records and his stature in baseball history. “Funny how Babe Ruth’s 714 home runs was the most impressive, unbreakable record in sports until a black man broke it,” he commented in Sports Illustrated. “Then it shifted. Now it’s DiMaggio’s hitting streak.”

Aaron’s full schedule includes duties for the Braves, where he is now a senior vice president, and appearances on the behalf of national charities. He rarely takes part in the lucrative autograph-signing business that provides income for other retired baseball superstars, preferring to spend his spare time at his well-guarded estate near Atlanta with his wife, children, and grandchildren. “I wonder if I really need baseball anymore … and if it really needs me,” Aaron concluded in his autobiography, I Had a Hammer. “But whenever I wonder about it, I usually come to the conclusion that I do, and it does—at least for the time being. Baseball needs me because it needs somebody to stir the pot, and I need it because it’s my life. It’s the means I have to make a little difference in the world.”

Sources

Books

Aaron, Hank, and Lonnie Wheeler, I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story, Harper, 1991.

Plimpton, George, One for the Record: The Inside Story of Hank Aaron’s Chase for the Home-Run Record, Harper, 1974.

Periodicals

Jet, February 23,1987, p. 47; September 28, 1987, p. 50.

Look, May 15, 1956, p. 122.

Newsweek, June 15, 1959, p. 94; April 22, 1974.

New York Times Magazine, March 31, 1974, p. 22.

Sports Illustrated, April 15, 1974, pp. 20–23; December 7, 1992, pp. 80–88.

Time, July 29, 1957, p. 45; September 24, 1973, pp. 73–77.

—Mark Kram