Hank Aaron- His Home Run Career
Henry Louis Aaron was born on February 5th, 1934 in Mobile, Alabama, in a poor part of the town known as Down The Bay. His family moved to a better area of the city called Toulminville, enabling him to attend high school at Central High. It was here that Aaron gained attention as a baseball player, with his cross-handed grip on the bat. He also was a stand-out in football, but his baseball ability allowed him to get into the Joseph Allen Institute, a private high school. By age fifteen, he was so good that he was playing semi-pro ball with the Pritchett Athletics for three dollars a game. A Brooklyn Dodger’s tryout did not get him a contract, leaving him with the option of playing for the semi-pro Mobile Black Bears.
In 1951, Hank Aaron was signed by scout Ed Scott to play for the Negro American League champion Indianapolis Clowns. Scott had seen Aaron’s talent on display in 1950, and with Aaron a major contributor, the Clowns won the 1952 Negro League World Series. In June of 1952, his contract was purchased by the Boston Braves for $10,000, making him the last Negro League player to make the jump to the major leagues. Aaron was sent to Eau Claire, Wisconsin to the Braves’ Class C farm club, where he played second base. He hit .326 for the season and garnered the Northern League’s Rookie of the Year award. 1953 saw Aaron moving up in the Braves system, but moving up meant going south, this time to the Jacksonville Tars of the South Atlantic League.
In the “Sally” League, Hank Aaron got his first big time taste of racial prejudice. He broke the color line in this league with a pair of teammates, and became the MVP by virtue of his .362 average, tolerating racial epithets from fans and discrimination everywhere in the South. On April 13th, 1954, Henry Aaron made his Major League Baseball debut with the Braves, who had shifted to Milwaukee, against the Reds, going 0 for 5. He had his first hit two days later and hit his first homerun on April 24th off the Cardinals Vic Raschi. A broken ankle in September ended his rookie year; he finished at .280 with 13 homers. The next year he was moved to right field, where he played the majority of his career. He began to show his immense talent, hitting .314 with 27 home runs and 106 RBI. In 1956, he won the first of his two batting titles with a .328 average, being named the Sporting News National League Player of the Year. In 1957 he was made a cleanup hitter, now batting behind slugging third baseman Eddie Matthews. He switched to a lighter bat, and the changes helped him smash 44 home runs and knock in a career high 132 on the way to his only NL MVP award. He clinched a Brave’s pennant in September with an 11th inning homer and hit three more in a seven game World Series defeat of the Yankees.
Aaron put together, in a quiet manner, one great season after another, rarely attracting the accolades that came to other great hitters. The Braves won the pennant once more in 1958, but the World Series outcome was reversed this time. In June of 1959, he hit three home runs in a game for the only time in his wonderful career. He was always more steady than spectacular, with his highest home run total being 47 in 1971. He hit over thirty homers an amazing fifteen times and forty or more eight different seasons. Wearing number 44, oddly enough he hit 44 homers in a season 4 times!
In 1963, Aaron missed winning the National League Triple Crown by .007 of a percentage point, as Tommy Davis took the batting title. He became the third member of the 30-30 club, hitting 44 homers and swiping 31 bases. He hit the last round tripper by a Milwaukee Brave on September 20th, 1965, as the Braves made Atlanta their home in 1966. The hitter friendly Fulton County Stadium helped Hank Aaron’s home run totals pile up, and by 1968 he had accumulated 500 by the age of 34. He was only the eighth player to reach the number at that time; his teammate Eddie Mathews had done it a year prior.
In 1969 he moved past Mickey Mantle to become the number three all time home run leader, behind Willie Mays and Babe Ruth. The Braves won the National League West but were ousted from the playoffs by the Mets in a three game sweep. On May 17th, 1970, Hank Aaron singled to achieve the 3,000 hit plateau. He was the only 3,000 hit-500 homer player at the time. He slammed his 600th home run in 1971, off of Gaylord Perry. He passed Mays in 1972 for home runs and Lou Gering for second place all time in RBI by the end of the year. He began to close in on Ruth’s hallowed 714 home run total, and as he did, hate mail from racists, who could not bear the thought of a black man holding the home run title, began to pour in. 1973 ended with Aaron at the doorstep of immortality, as he hit 40 homers to bring him to 713.
In the off-season, Hank Aaron was subjected to a barrage of racist vitriol. As the hate mail and threats to his life increased, the sports editor of the Atlanta Journal had an obituary written just in case Aaron was murdered by someone carrying out his warnings. As what he was enduring became public, he received an outpouring of support from people trying to offset the prejudice. The Braves opened the season in Cincinnati, and Aaron tied Ruth with a home run in his first at bat. He did not hit another that series and the Braves returned to Atlanta to play the Dodgers
On April 8th, 1974, Al Downing of Los Angeles threw Henry Aaron a fastball that he crushed out of the park in front of a national television audience for home run number 715. The Braves traded him to the Milwaukee Brewers of the American League at year’s end so he could extend his career by playing as a designated hitter. Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all time RBI record in May of 1975 and hit his final, and 755th home run, in July of 1976, at the age of 42.
He was elected to the Hall of Fame with almost 98 % of the sportswriters’ votes in 1982. Hank Aaron became one of the first black men in Major League Baseball upper-level management as Atlanta’s vice president of player development. In December of 1989, he was named senior vice president and assistant to the president. He went to work for Turner broadcasting and became a member of TBS’ board of directors. In 2002, Hank Aaron received the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Statues of Aaron stand outside both Atlanta’s Turner Field and Milwaukee’s Miller Park, honoring the slugger who came to be known as “Hammerin Hank”. The hate mail he received he has never thrown away, but he has lost the feeling of bitterness that accompanied his record setting home run. He has the ball he hit that April night, along with all his other cherished souvenirs from baseball, and intends to never part with them despite the price they would fetch today. His greatest memory of his career is not that home run, but the one that clinched the Braves’ first pennant back in 1957.
Hank Aaron holds the Major League baseball records for the most home runs, RBI, at bats, games played, total bases, and extra base hits. He won three Gold Gloves for fielding excellence and ranks third on the total base hit ledger with 3,771. He hit .305 lifetime and won four National League home run titles. He appeared in 21 All-Star games. His grace and dignity under the pressure of his quest to surpass Ruth earned him the respect of a nation, and his lightning quick wrists and continual excellence struck fear into pitchers for 23 seasons. Hurler Curt Simmons, who faced Aaron on numerous occasions, once said of Henry,” Trying to throw a fastball past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak a sunrise past a rooster.”
