At what should have been the pinnacle of his long career in baseball, Henry Aaron was getting bags of hate mail many containing death threats and living in a storage room at the stadium, accompanied by bodyguards when he ventured out.
It was 1973, the country remained divided along racial lines, and Aaron, a Black player for the Atlanta Braves, was closing in on Babe Ruth’s holy career record of 714 home runs. To some, it was sacrilegious that a Black man would threaten the record of the immortal Babe.
Aaron eventually tied, then surpassed Ruth’s record, finishing his remarkable 23-year career with 755 homers. Even at that, he felt shortchanged.
on Friday. Slate is republishing this 2007 story on the media’s treatment of the former home run king.
This baseball season, it fell to the sporting press to drag a reluctant Hank Aaron once more into public view, the occasion being Barry Bonds’ slow-motion pursuit of a stationary number. Now, any time an old baseball personage hobbles back into frame, he is invariably described in awed, petrifying language better suited to, say, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The treatment of Aaron hasn’t been any different. A spin through the sports pages over the past few months reveals that he is a man of “cool dignity,” “quiet dignity,” “innate dignity,” “immense dignity,” “eternal dignity,” “unfettered dignity,” “unimpeachable dignity,” the very “picture of dignity” who “brought so much dignity to baseball” and who, “having exuded dignity his entire life,” continues to this day “exud[ing] class and dignity.” Aaron, proclaimed the inevitable
At what should have been the pinnacle of his long career in baseball, Henry Aaron was getting bags of hate mail many containing death threats and living in a storage room at the stadium, accompanied by bodyguards when he ventured out.
It was 1973, the country remained divided along racial lines and Aaron, a Black American playing for the Atlanta Braves, was closing in on Babe Ruth’s holy career record of 714 home runs. To some, it was sacrilegious that a Black man would threaten the record of the immortal Babe.
Aaron eventually tied, then surpassed Ruth’s record, finishing his remarkable 23-year career with 755 homers. Even at that, he felt shortchanged.
Hank Aaron s lasting impact is measured in more than home runs
play
Howard Bryant shares lasting memories of Hank Aaron (3:00)
Howard Bryant reflects on the moments he shared with Hank Aaron while writing a biography of the Hall of Famer. (3:00)
Author of The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron
Author of Juicing the Game
Henry Aaron, who rose up from the depths of Southern poverty to become one of the towering figures in baseball history as well as a bittersweet symbol of both American racial intolerance and triumph, has died. He was 86.
When he retired in 1976 after a 23-year major league career with the National League Braves (spending 1954 to 1965 in Milwaukee, 1966-74 in Atlanta) before playing his final two seasons with the American League Milwaukee Brewers, Aaron had amassed staggering offensive numbers, holding the career records for most home runs (755), RBIs (2,297), total bases (6,856), games played (3,298), at-bats (12,364) and plate appearances (13,941). He was se