Happy Birthday Hank Aaron
by Mark Anthony Neal
It was July 8, 1973, and my father had taken me to New York's Shea Stadium, where the Mets were playing the Atlanta Braves. I was 7 years old and a big-time fan of Willie Mays, who was playing for the Mets in his last professional season. But most of the people who came out that day were there to witness another legend. And that legend didn't disappoint -- Hank Aaron belted two home-runs, bringing him that much closer to Babe Ruth's historic record of 714.
I left the stadium a fan of Hammerin' Hank.
Tom Stanton was 12 years old that summer, and as he recalls in "Hank Aaron and the Home Run that Changed America," he was among the tens of thousands of children who wrote to Aaron that year in an effort to "eradicate the evil heaped upon our hero." That so many children felt the need to reach out to Aaron has everything to do with why a single homerun is still seen as emblematic of America's changing race relations.
Racism may not have been wholly responsible for the hate mail Aaron received -- Roger Maris was treated harshly when he was breaking Ruth's single-season homerun record in '61 -- but the memory of Martin Luther King's assassination was still fresh and America was still in the throes of a social movement that was transforming how "race" was lived.
And, of course, Aaron plied his trade in the onetime heart of the Confederacy, a fact he was likely reminded of when he peered out at the empty seats in Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium as he drove toward the record. Sports may have been regarded as one of the arenas where America's racial tensions were defused, but Aaron himself might have disagreed with that premise; many whites moved out of his Atlanta neighborhood after his family arrived in 1967.
Though Aaron discussed his challenges in his '91 autobiography "I Had a Hammer," Stanton draws upon interviews and published comments from Aaron's friends, family, peers and teammates to fill in the blanks in ways that the intensely private Aaron never would have. The comments from former teammates Ralph Garr and Dusty Baker, both of whom Aaron mentored closely, are particularly helpful as they had a bird's-eye view of Aaron's daily state. Sharing the outfield with him, they were well aware that they, too, were targets.
Stanton begins his story not in the spring of 1973, when Aaron's quest began to make news, but the previous autumn, at the funeral of Jackie Robinson. Like many of the black players of his generation, Aaron viewed Robinson as a hero and a role model. And Robinson realized that Aaron was his heir-apparent in the task of agitating for better race relations within the league; particularly important to both men was the hiring of a black manager. Stanton writes that as Aaron sat in New York's Riverside Church, listening to Robinson's eulogy, he "realized that with the sports world focusing on his home-run pursuit, he would be in a position to push the issue."
Aaron didn't break the record during the 1973 season, ending the year two shy of his goal.
In one of the most moving passages of the book, Stanton details the outpouring of emotions that Braves fans -- more than 40,000 of them -- gave Aaron the last day of the season. "All season Aaron had been hitting home runs in Atlanta before sparse gatherings of 3,000 and 5,000 and 9,000," Stanton writes. "Now before this enormous crowd he had failed to hit one -- and still they cheered him."
"But, of course," he adds, "this wasn't about home runs. It was about something else. It was an embrace, an affectionate pat on the back, a way of telling Aaron that those hecklers and letter writers and furious little bigots didn't represent them."
Aaron himself was rarely vocal about the issues swirling around him, but he took stands with the same quiet intensity he brought to the batter's box. His record-tying homer occurred in Cincinnati the following April 4 -- which was, coincidentally, the sixth anniversary of King's assassination. Jesse Jackson, who eulogized Jackie Robinson two years earlier and had long provided spiritual support to Aaron, prodded Hammerin' Hank to ask Cincinnati Reds officials to honor King with a moment of silence before the game. They declined the request. "We don't get into politics. We don't get into race" was the official word from Reds official Dick Wagner.
Measuring Aaron's legacy, Stanton notes that an unusual number of players in his orbit went on to notable careers. Baker, Felipe Alou and Cito Gaston were all at the Braves spring training complex in 1968 and the trio became not only Major League Baseball's most successful minority managers of the last two decades, but arguably three of the best managers of the last two decades, period. (And, of course, a year after Aaron hit number 715, Frank Robinson became the first black manager in major league history.) Aaron's ability to stay focused amidst daily threats was clearly an inspiration to his black and Latino teammates. "My players tell me I can't give a speech without mentioning Hank Aaron," admits Baker. "There are not enough words to show my appreciation for the impact (he) has had on me."
The strength of "Hank Aaron and the Home Run that Changed America" is that you never get the sense that the 12-year-old Stanton we meet at the beginning is very far from the narrative. Aaron's homerun may have made just a small dent in America's racial quagmire -- though sports is a metaphor for America, it is not America itself -- but it clearly helped many young fans, including Stanton, imagine a more equitable world.
Stanton's last book, the well-regarded "The Final Season," was a lament for Detroit's now-gone Tiger Stadium, so it's no surprise that this one is steeped in nostalgia and fandom. But as American youth continue to turn away from baseball, which has been "defiled" by drug accusations and labor disputes, Stanton's book is a laudable attempt to make our passion for the game all right again.
*An earlier version published in the Austin Statesman (2004)
by Mark Anthony Neal
It was July 8, 1973, and my father had taken me to New York's Shea Stadium, where the Mets were playing the Atlanta Braves. I was 7 years old and a big-time fan of Willie Mays, who was playing for the Mets in his last professional season. But most of the people who came out that day were there to witness another legend. And that legend didn't disappoint -- Hank Aaron belted two home-runs, bringing him that much closer to Babe Ruth's historic record of 714.
I left the stadium a fan of Hammerin' Hank.
Tom Stanton was 12 years old that summer, and as he recalls in "Hank Aaron and the Home Run that Changed America," he was among the tens of thousands of children who wrote to Aaron that year in an effort to "eradicate the evil heaped upon our hero." That so many children felt the need to reach out to Aaron has everything to do with why a single homerun is still seen as emblematic of America's changing race relations.
Racism may not have been wholly responsible for the hate mail Aaron received -- Roger Maris was treated harshly when he was breaking Ruth's single-season homerun record in '61 -- but the memory of Martin Luther King's assassination was still fresh and America was still in the throes of a social movement that was transforming how "race" was lived.
And, of course, Aaron plied his trade in the onetime heart of the Confederacy, a fact he was likely reminded of when he peered out at the empty seats in Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium as he drove toward the record. Sports may have been regarded as one of the arenas where America's racial tensions were defused, but Aaron himself might have disagreed with that premise; many whites moved out of his Atlanta neighborhood after his family arrived in 1967.
Though Aaron discussed his challenges in his '91 autobiography "I Had a Hammer," Stanton draws upon interviews and published comments from Aaron's friends, family, peers and teammates to fill in the blanks in ways that the intensely private Aaron never would have. The comments from former teammates Ralph Garr and Dusty Baker, both of whom Aaron mentored closely, are particularly helpful as they had a bird's-eye view of Aaron's daily state. Sharing the outfield with him, they were well aware that they, too, were targets.
Stanton begins his story not in the spring of 1973, when Aaron's quest began to make news, but the previous autumn, at the funeral of Jackie Robinson. Like many of the black players of his generation, Aaron viewed Robinson as a hero and a role model. And Robinson realized that Aaron was his heir-apparent in the task of agitating for better race relations within the league; particularly important to both men was the hiring of a black manager. Stanton writes that as Aaron sat in New York's Riverside Church, listening to Robinson's eulogy, he "realized that with the sports world focusing on his home-run pursuit, he would be in a position to push the issue."
Aaron didn't break the record during the 1973 season, ending the year two shy of his goal.
In one of the most moving passages of the book, Stanton details the outpouring of emotions that Braves fans -- more than 40,000 of them -- gave Aaron the last day of the season. "All season Aaron had been hitting home runs in Atlanta before sparse gatherings of 3,000 and 5,000 and 9,000," Stanton writes. "Now before this enormous crowd he had failed to hit one -- and still they cheered him."
"But, of course," he adds, "this wasn't about home runs. It was about something else. It was an embrace, an affectionate pat on the back, a way of telling Aaron that those hecklers and letter writers and furious little bigots didn't represent them."
Aaron himself was rarely vocal about the issues swirling around him, but he took stands with the same quiet intensity he brought to the batter's box. His record-tying homer occurred in Cincinnati the following April 4 -- which was, coincidentally, the sixth anniversary of King's assassination. Jesse Jackson, who eulogized Jackie Robinson two years earlier and had long provided spiritual support to Aaron, prodded Hammerin' Hank to ask Cincinnati Reds officials to honor King with a moment of silence before the game. They declined the request. "We don't get into politics. We don't get into race" was the official word from Reds official Dick Wagner.
Measuring Aaron's legacy, Stanton notes that an unusual number of players in his orbit went on to notable careers. Baker, Felipe Alou and Cito Gaston were all at the Braves spring training complex in 1968 and the trio became not only Major League Baseball's most successful minority managers of the last two decades, but arguably three of the best managers of the last two decades, period. (And, of course, a year after Aaron hit number 715, Frank Robinson became the first black manager in major league history.) Aaron's ability to stay focused amidst daily threats was clearly an inspiration to his black and Latino teammates. "My players tell me I can't give a speech without mentioning Hank Aaron," admits Baker. "There are not enough words to show my appreciation for the impact (he) has had on me."
The strength of "Hank Aaron and the Home Run that Changed America" is that you never get the sense that the 12-year-old Stanton we meet at the beginning is very far from the narrative. Aaron's homerun may have made just a small dent in America's racial quagmire -- though sports is a metaphor for America, it is not America itself -- but it clearly helped many young fans, including Stanton, imagine a more equitable world.
Stanton's last book, the well-regarded "The Final Season," was a lament for Detroit's now-gone Tiger Stadium, so it's no surprise that this one is steeped in nostalgia and fandom. But as American youth continue to turn away from baseball, which has been "defiled" by drug accusations and labor disputes, Stanton's book is a laudable attempt to make our passion for the game all right again.
*An earlier version published in the Austin Statesman (2004)
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