MOBILE, Alabama — For those too young to remember it, Hank Aaron’s pursuit of Babe Ruth’s all-time Major League Baseball home run record was one of the most galvanizing sagas in sports history. Aaron, who died on Friday, just two weeks shy of his 87th birthday, pursued and achieved the record with courage, dignity, and class. In doing so, he also achieved long-lasting benefits for race relations, including here in his hometown, at a significant personal, emotional cost of his own.

Ruth’s record had stood for 39 years, with only Aaron and Willie Mays ever threatening to come within 100 dingers of Ruth’s 714. Mays, who had lost two early-career seasons to Korean War service, was always likely to fall just a bit short. Aaron, who lacked Mays’s flair and his New York-to-California media attention, had labored in relative shadows in Middle America, playing for the Braves.