Hank Aaron

American baseball player

• Born: February 5, 1934
• Birthplace: Mobile, Alabama
• Died: January 22, 2021
• Place of death: Atlanta, Georgia

Aaron, a perennial star of Major League Baseball, set several all-time records. His most famous achievement was surpassing Babe Ruth’s career home run mark of 714. Aaron also was well known for his tenacity in the face of racism both on and off the field.

Early Life

Hank Aaron (EHR-uhn) was born to a large and loving family during the middle of the Great Depression. With his laborer father continually battling unemployment, and the family victimized by the odious Jim Crow laws of the time, the Aarons faced challenging circumstances. Aaron grew up in the economically depressed area called Down the Bay, but, despite his introverted demeanor, he had many friends and enjoyed the company of his siblings. He was very athletic and enjoyed playing several sports, but he particularly excelled at football and baseball. The shy but fun-loving Aaron played baseball at two high schools, winning championships and gaining the interest of professional scouts. Even at this early age, Aaron showed a real talent for hitting hard line drives to all parts of the ball park. With keen vision, strong wrists, and a beautiful swing, he was clearly an outstanding batter, but he also excelled at base running and had a strong and accurate throwing arm. Aaron was such an outstanding player that he usually competed against players several years older. His mother worried about the potentially harmful influences Aaron was encountering and tried vainly to keep him near home, but she was fighting a losing battle.

Aaron’s adult career began with the local semiprofessional team, the Pritchett Athletics. Mobile, Alabama, had much baseball talent at the time and, in addition to Aaron, had produced or would produce major league Hall of Fame players Satchel Paige, Willie McCovey, and Billy Williams. Aaron’s next team was the Mobile Black Bears, but he clearly outclassed that level of competition quickly. Playing for the Bears was not a high-paying proposition, but it did lead to him meeting an agent, who managed to land the young slugger a contract with a well-known and prestigious Negro League team, the Indianapolis Clowns.

After leading the Clowns to victory in the 1952 Negro League World Series, Aaron secured a tryout with one of the most successful and revered teams in Major League Baseball, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Incredibly, the Dodgers, which had brought integration to the major leagues in 1947 with Jackie Robinson and which now employed several outstanding African American players, chose not to offer Aaron a contract. At this point, his meteoric rise in baseball appeared stalled.

Life’s Work

By 1952, only six of the eighteen major-league teams had African American players, and the Dodgers, the team with the strongest record in that area, had just rejected Aaron. Other teams, however, were interested, and he signed with another National League team, the Boston Braves. The team paid ten thousand dollars for Aaron’s contract, a fortune in the eyes of the young Alabaman, and he began preparing for his minor-league career. The Braves were about to abandon Boston, a city that for decades had been more enamored with the Braves’ hometown rival, the Red Sox. By 1953, the team would be in Milwaukee.

Aaron spent the rest of the 1952 season playing for the Braves’ farm, or minor-league, team in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he again outperformed his teammates and the competition and won an award for the best rookie in the league. At Eau Claire he encountered few examples of overt racism, but there were only three African Americans on the roster and Eau Claire was a nearly all-white city. At Jacksonville, Florida, in 1953, the situation was substantially worse. This was the infamous Southern League, which had maintained the prohibition of black players long after the major leagues had integrated. African American players were refused at hotels and restaurants that welcomed their white teammates, and the crowd routinely hurled vile and hateful names at the black players from the stands. Nevertheless, Aaron had another outstanding season, and by 1954, the Milwaukee Braves could no longer deny him a space on its big-league team.

After Braves left fielder Bobby Thomson broke his ankle in a game, Aaron’s place on the team was secured. Aaron’s first major-league game was April 13, 1954, and the debut was inauspicious at best. Battling against Joe Nuxhall, the left-hander of the Cincinnati Reds, Aaron went without a hit in five at bats. The rookie remained confident and two days later achieved his first hit in the majors, a single against the St. Louis Cardinals and pitcher Vic Raschi. Later that month, Aaron connected for the first of his 755 career home runs, also against Raschi. Over the course of the 1954 season, he batted a very respectable .280 with 13 home runs before also suffering a broken ankle, which ended his year prematurely.

In the team’s clubhouse, Aaron’s reception was somewhat less than welcoming. Rookies usually were treated with an indifference bordering on hostility, but Aaron’s treatment included comments made to him personally and to the press. Statements made by some of his veteran teammates showed they believed him to be lazy and not very bright. His manager, Charlie Grimm, was quoted as calling him “Stepanfetchit” and first baseman Joe Adcock questioned his work ethic. Aaron moved with a languid but athletic grace that seemed effortless to less-gifted players. Even at the major-league level, his graceful movement was interpreted as dilatory loping.

Nevertheless, through the 1950s and into the 1960s, Milwaukee embraced its slugging outfielder. Year after year, Aaron excelled. He led the league four times in home runs and twice in batting average. He won the award for National League Most Valuable Player in 1957. Aaron twice led the Braves to the World Series, helping them defeat the Yankees in 1957 (they lost to them the following year). In 1959, the Braves and Dodgers ended the season in a tie, but the Dodgers won the play-off series.

In 1966, after years of falling attendance, the Braves left Milwaukee for Atlanta, but Aaron’s slugging continued. Babe Ruth’s long-held career home run mark of 714, which had stood since 1935, seemed in range for Aaron. After hitting 47 home runs in 1971, 34 in 1972, and 40 in 1973, Aaron trailed Ruth’s mark by only one home run entering the 1974 season. The pressure of the pursuit wore Aaron down physically and emotionally, and he received a barrage of hate mail and death threats. The Braves opened the season in Cincinnati on April 4, and with his first swing of the year Aaron hit a three-run home run, tying Ruth’s mark. By the time the Braves played their first home game against the Dodgers on April 8, the hype and media attention was overwhelming, yet Aaron connected for a home run off left-hander Al Downing. Finally, Aaron received the honors and recognition he had for so long deserved.

Significance

Aaron played through 1976, spending his last two years in baseball as a player with the Milwaukee Brewers of the American League. He finished his career with 755 home runs, an elusive mark not matched until August 7, 2007, by Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants. (Though he refused to be in attendance when Bonds broke his record, Aaron did offer congratulations via a video broadcast on the stadium's big screen.) Aaron was admitted to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982 with one of the highest percentages of the admittance vote of all time. He also became a pioneer as one of the first minority members of baseball's top management positions, as he became the vice president of development for the Braves. In 1989 he became senior vice president of the Atlanta Braves. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 2002.

Both as a player and in retirement, Aaron never hesitated to speak out against any form of injustice. Through most of his career, he toiled in the shadows of flashier contemporaries such as Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, but in the end his achievements outdistanced both of them. As great as that career was, however, it was dwarfed by his admirable personal traits such as concern for others, honesty, and diligence.

Bibliography

Aaron, Hank, and Lonnie Wheeler. I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Print.

Goodman, Michael E. The Story of the Atlanta Braves. Mankato, MN: Creative Education, 2012. Print.

Gutman, Bill. It’s Outta Here! Lanham, MD: Taylor, 2005. Print.

"Hank Aaron Biography." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 2015. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.

Klima, John. Bushville Wins! The Wild Saga of the 1957 Milwaukee Braves and the Screwballs, Sluggers, and Beer Swiggers Who Canned the New York Yankees and Changed Baseball. New York: Dunne, 2012. Print.

Motley, Bob, and Byron Motley. Ruling over Monarchs, Giants and Stars: True Tales of Breaking Barriers, Umpiring Baseball Legends, and Wild Adventures in the Negro Leagues. New York: Sports, 2011.

Tolan, Sandy. Me and Hank: A Boy and His Hero, Twenty-Five Years Later. New York: Free, 2000.