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.
Then, in early 1973, it became apparent that Aaron, then 39, wasn’t letting age slow him down. He really had a chance. As letters by the thousands flowed in every week, a significant part of it hate mail from racists who were furious that a black man would dethrone the Bambino, Aaron put together the eighth 40-homer season of his long career. He cleared the fence in more than one of every 10 at-bats — a remarkable feat at any age, much less for someone in his 20th big-league season.
Everywhere he went, the spotlight shone. Everywhere he went, the pressure grew. And while the vast majority of people were rooting for him to succeed, the vitriol (and sometimes threats) from the racists wore unmercifully on Aaron.
Still, he persisted. Smiling less than some expected but refusing (until after the record was his) to express the bitterness he felt about the hate and threats, Aaron remained gracious and approachable to the media while avoiding braggadocio. And, almost like a metronome, his homers kept coming.
He finished that season agonizingly close, with 713. That meant that the attention, the pressure, and the drama would continue to build for six long months of the baseball off-season. In the course of one calendar year, Aaron received nearly a million pieces of mail.
Most people in the country, not just baseball fans, were mesmerized. And as the anticipation and abuse both grew, Aaron never publicly lost his cool or made an off remark — and he never, to my memory, did anything to heighten the racial angle to the story.
Anyone not too lost to hatred just had to root for Hammerin’ Hank. North, south, it didn’t matter. From where I watched as a 10-year-old in New Orleans, every one of my friends was pulling hard for him to succeed. And from the stories I’ve heard from Mobile, where I have now lived for years, his hometown embraced him unquestioningly, white and black alike. Never mind that this was the state of virulently racist Gov. George Wallace: Here at home, Aaron transcended race.
Perhaps the best story I heard was of the white, Catholic, junior high group studying catechism in the front room of a home on the night of April 8, 1974. Aaron had tied the record on his first swing of the 1974 season, then failed in his next game. But game three was televised nationally, a big deal at the time. Suddenly, from the back den, the voice of the father of one of the girls erupted.
“Goddamn it!” he yelled. “He’s done it!”
And the profanity wasn’t anger. It was thrilled, joyful, celebratory excitement from a man who completely forgot, in the moment, that his daughter and her friends were in the front room learning doctrine. This was a hosanna for the local man, not just made good but made heroic. Surpassing Ruth was a modern miracle.
Today in Mobile, the minor league baseball stadium is known as the “Hank.” A section of downtown is called the Hank Aaron Loop. And Aaron’s childhood home is a tourist attraction.
Forget the later, steroid-fueled long-ball records. Hank Aaron will always be the home run king. More important, he was a man well worth emulating. Now he has cleared his final fence.
