Henry “Hank” Aaron, a Hall of Fame baseball player who for decades held Major League Baseball’s all-time home runs record, died at the age of 86 on Friday.
“We are devastated by the passing of Hammerin’ Hank Aaron, one of the greatest players and people in the history of our game. He was 86,” MLB said in a statement on social media. The Atlanta Braves, the team he spent most of his career with, tweeted a photo of him from his playing career without a caption.
The cause of death was not immediately known.
“Hank Aaron is near the top of everyone’s list of all-time great players,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “His monumental achievements as a player were surpassed only by his dignity and integrity as a person. Hank symbolized the very best of our game, and his all-around excellence provided Americans and fans across the world with an example to which to aspire. His career demonstrates that a person who goes to work with humility every day can hammer his way into history — and find a way to shine like no other.”
“Hank eagerly supported our efforts to celebrate the game’s best and to find its next generation of stars, including through the Hank Aaron Award, which recognizes offensive excellence by Major League players, and the Hank Aaron Invitational, which provides exposure to elite young players,” he continued. “He became a close friend to me in recent years as result of his annual visit to the World Series. That friend is one of the greatest honors of my life. I am forever grateful for Hank’s impact on our sport and the society it represents, and he will always occupy a special place in the history of our game. On behalf of Major League Baseball, I want to extend my deepest condolences to Hank’s wife, Billye, their family, the fans of Atlanta and Milwaukee, and the millions of admirers earned by one of the pillars of our game.”
Braves Chairman Terry McGuirk said in a statement that the organization is “absolutely devastated by the passing of our beloved Hank. He was a beacon for our organization first as a player, then with player development, and always with our community efforts. His incredible talent and resolve helped him achieve the highest accomplishments, yet he never lost his humble nature.”
We are devastated by the passing of Hammerin’ Hank Aaron, one of the greatest players and people in the history of our game. He was 86. pic.twitter.com/bCvLOydGBZ
— MLB (@MLB) January 22, 2021
Aaron was born on Feb. 5, 1934, in Mobile, Alabama, as one of eight children. He spent much of his childhood in the district of Toulminville, with his family on the brink of poverty. Aaron, influenced by Jackie Robinson, the MLB player who broke the color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers, tried out with the same team in 1949 as a teenager, but he did not earn a contract.
In 1951, three years before Aaron made his MLB debut, he agreed to a contract with the Negro American League champion team, the Indianapolis Clowns.
“Hammerin’ Hank” spent more than two decades in MLB, playing for the then-Milwaukee Braves, then the Atlanta Braves after the team relocated in 1965, and later the Milwaukee Brewers.
“What a marvelous moment for baseball … What a marvelous moment for the country and the world.”
RIP Hank Aaron, one of the greatest of all time.pic.twitter.com/kjrvSK19BM
— MLB Vault (@MLBVault) January 22, 2021
Aaron was a 25-time All-Star, being selected to play in the game every year from 1955-1975. He won the National League Most Valuable Player award in 1957, which is the same year he won his only World Series. He also won three Gold Glove awards, which are given to the best fielders at each position each year, had the highest batting average for the league twice, and led the league in home runs in four different seasons.
During his illustrious career, the slugger knocked 755 home runs, which remained an unbroken record for decades. On April 8, 1974, in front of a home crowd of 53,775 fans, Aaron hit his 715th home run, which gave him the crown as the slugging king after surpassing Babe Ruth’s record. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1982.
Aaron is recognized by Guinness World Records as being the private citizen to receive the highest volume of mail in one year, with 900,000 letters in 1974, and he received honors from the U.S. Postal Service for the achievement. A post on the Guinness World Records website said: “About a third were letters of hate engendered by his bettering of Babe Ruth’s career record for ‘home runs.'”
“The Ruth chase should have been the greatest period of my life, and it was the worst,” Aaron wrote in his 1991 autobiography, I Had a Hammer. “I couldn’t believe there was so much hatred in people. It’s something I’m still trying to get over, and maybe I never will.”
After Aaron hit home run No. 715, surpassing Ruth, Dodgers radio announcer Vin Scully, who was calling the Braves-Dodgers game, said, “What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us and, particularly, for Henry Aaron. … And for the first time in a long time, that poker face of Aaron shows the tremendous strain and relief of what it must have been like to live with for the past several months.”
Aaron remains baseball’s Runs Batted In leader with 2,297 and Total Base leader with 6,856, but his home run record fell to Barry Bonds in 2006, who finished his career with 762 but under the shadow of the baseball steroids scandal.
Aaron was also involved with politics.
Former President Bill Clinton credited the former slugger with helping him win Georgia in the 1992 presidential campaign, in part due to an Atlanta rally that Aaron helped organize. The president awarded Aaron with the Presidential Citizens Medal for “exemplary service to the nation” in 2001, according to the Washington Post.
