A

Hank Aaron

1934-

American baseball player

The baseball legend Hank Aaron holds the major league record for the most career home runs (755) and made his way into the record books with 12 other career firsts, including most games, at-bats, total bases, and runs batted in (RBI). "Hammerin' Hank" made history on April 8, 1974, when he surpassed Babe Ruth's home run record of 714; he went on to outdo Ruth by 42 home runs. Throughout his long, decorated career as a player for the Indianapolis Clowns, Milwaukee Braves, Atlanta Braves, and Milwaukee Brewers, Aaron played a record number of All-Star Games and won three Golden Glove Awards for his performance in right field. As the last Negro League player to have also played in the major leagues, Aaron was a bridge between two worlds, facing and speaking out against racial discrimination, particularly toward the end of his career. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982.

Born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1934, Henry Louis Aaron was the third of eight children of Herbert and Estella Aaron. Nicknamed "Man" by his parents and siblings, young Aaron lived with his family in a poor, predominantly black area of town called Down the Bay. The family later moved to an area known as Toulminville, where the young athlete was raised in the midst of the Great Depression. He fell in love with baseball at an early age, taking his first swings with broomsticks as bats and bottle caps as balls. His boyhood idol was the first African American major league player, Jackie Robinson.

A star athlete in high school, Aaron played shortstop and third base; despite the fact that he batted cross-handed, he was a powerful hitter. By his junior year he was playing semiprofessional baseball with the Mobile Black Bears, who paid him ten dollars a game. A distinguished football player as well as a baseball star, he attended Mobile's Central High School and later transferred to the Josephine Allan Institute. Although he received several football scholarship offers, he turned these down to pursue a career in major league baseball.

Played in Negro League and Major League

On November 20, 1951, 18-year-old Aaron was signed by scout Ed Scott to play shortstop for the Negro League team the Indianapolis Clowns. Leaving home for the first time, he relocated to the Midwest, where he helped the Clowns to a 1952 Negro League World Series victory. Yet Aaron was with the Negro League for only about six months before he received two telegram offers from major league teams—one from the San Francisco Giants and one from the Milwaukee Braves. Thinking he'd have a better chance to make the team, Aaron chose the Braves over the Giants, who had star player Willie Mays.

Sold to the Milwaukee team for $10,000, Aaron signed with Braves' scout Dewey Griggs on June 14, 1952. His first assignment was to the team's farm club in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Playing second base in the farm club, Aaron was named Northern League Rookie of the Year in 1952. "[I]t wasn't too much of a transition from playing the type of baseball that we played in the Negro League to playing professional baseball," Aaron told Tavis Smiley of National Public Radio (NPR). "The difference, of course, was that instead of making $400 a month, I was making $600 a month. Instead of getting $2 a day meal money, I was getting $3 a day meal money. So it wasn't that much of a difference."

The following year Aaron played for the Braves' affiliate team in the South Atlantic League, the Jacksonville Tars. As one of the first five African Americans to play in the "Sally League," Aaron faced racial discrimination in the segregated South. He was separated from his teammates while traveling by bus, and often had to make his own arrangements for housing and meals. Despite these indignities, Aaron helped lead Jacksonville to a pennant win and was named the league's Most Valuable Player. He had led the league in everything from batting average (.362) and RBI (125) to runs (115) and hits (208).

While playing winter ball in Puerto Rico in 1953, Aaron learned to play the outfield. This new skill would come in handy the following spring, when an injury sidelined Braves left fielder Bobby Thomson. Aaron stepped in to take his place in the outfield, making his major league debut at age 20. In March 1954 he hit his first major-league home run during spring training. He made his official debut at the Braves'April 13 game against the Cincinnati Reds. Ten days later he hit his first major league home run. Aaron stopped just short of completing his first season with the Braves, breaking his ankle in early September and sitting out the rest of the year.

It did not take Aaron long to regain his footing. In 1955 he moved to right field, where he would remain for most of his career and earn three Golden Glove Awards; in batting, he averaged. 314 and hit 27 home runs. In July he played in his first All-Star Game. The following season his batting average edged up to%. 328, leading to his first of two National League batting titles. By 1957 the 23-year-old player seemed at the peak of his powers, leading the league with his batting prowess. In a game that led the Braves to a pennant win, Aaron scored a heroic home run in the eleventh inning and was carried off the field by his teammates. He went on to average.393 and hit three home runs in the 1957 World Series, helping the Braves to victory over the New York Yankees.

In October he was named the league's Most Valuable Player for the first and only time of his career.

Now a full-fledged baseball superstar, Aaron began racking up home runs. The six-foot, 180-pound player took his power not from his heft but from his strong, supple wrists and his deft swing. "I looked for one pitch my whole career, a breaking ball," he told David Hinckley of the New York Daily News. "I never worried about the fastball. They couldn't throw it by me, none of them."

In June 1959, after hitting three homers in a single game against the San Francisco Giants, Aaron was paid $30,000 to appear on the television show Home Run Derby. After this experience, which earned him nearly as much as his annual salary, Aaron altered his hitting style to bring in even more home runs. Defending this choice, he once said, "I noticed that they never had a show called 'Singles Derby,'" according to the Sporting News. In June 1962 he and teammates Eddie Matthews, Joe Adcock, and Frank Thomas became the first four players ever to hit consecutive home runs in a game.

Became America's Home Run King

In 1966 the Braves moved to Atlanta, giving the American South its first major league baseball team. That year and the following, Aaron led the league in home runs. Soon baseball fans began to recognize that the slugger had a chance at breaking Babe Ruth's home run record. In July 1968 he had hit his 500th homer, and a year later he took the 3,000th hit of his career.

The more home runs Aaron hit, the more mail he received—and not all of it was fan mail. By the early 1970s Aaron was receiving an estimated 3,000 letters a day, most of it from racists who warned the player against beating Ruth's record. "Dear Henry," read one such letter as quoted by Larry Schwartz of ESPN.com. "You are (not) going to break this record established by the great Babe Ruth if I can help it."

The experience changed the soft-spoken player, who became more forthright on racial issues. "When people ask me what progress Negroes have made in baseball, I tell them the Negro hasn't made any progress on the field," he said in 1970 according to BaseballLibrary.com. "We haven't made any progress in the commissioner's office.… I still think it's tokenism. We don't have Negro secretaries in some of the big league offices, and I think it's time that the major leagues and baseball in general just took hold of themselves and started hiring some of these capable people."

On June 10, 1972, Aaron hit his 649th home run, tying with Willie Mays for second place in career home runs. His quest for Ruth's record had officially begun, and the following year and a half was the most difficult period in Aaron's life. While many fans cheered him on, others continued to threaten the African American player. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was called in, and security was tightened at the Braves' ballpark. The 39-year-old player had to travel with Secret Service agents protecting him. Even worse, his college-student daughter had received threats as well. Separated from his teammates, Aaron often slept at the ballpark, in a room reserved for him, so that he did not have to go out into the public. Throughout this period he drew strength from his strong Christian faith and did not waver from his principles of hard work and self-discipline. He ended the 1973 season with 713 home runs—just one shy of tying Ruth's record.

The 1974 baseball season began with much anticipation; fans wondered not if but when Aaron would break Ruth's record. The answer was not long in coming, as Aaron hit a homer in his first at-bat of the season. His eyes teared as he rounded third base; he was now tied for the record. That night, according to Schwartz, he called his mother, saying, "I'm going to save the next one for you, Mom." Four days later, on April 8, 1974, the largest crowd in Braves history (53,775) filled the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Aaron hit the record-breaking homer in the fourth inning, off a fastball from Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing. The ball sailed over the left-center field wall and into the Braves bull pen, where it was caught by relief pitcher Tom House. As Aaron rounded the bases, two college students leaped onto the field to run with him before security guards stepped in. Aaron's excited teammates mobbed him at home base, and the crowd went wild.

Aaron's feat came more than two years before his retirement as a major league ballplayer. He hit his last home run as a Braves player, his 733rd, on October 2, 1974. In November Aaron squared off with Japanese home run king Sadaharu Oh in a home run contest, beating Oh 10-9 (the Japanese slugger would go on to break Aaron's record, however). By the following season Aaron had been traded to the Milwaukee Brewers; in Wisconsin, he was able to end his career where he began it. He hit his first home run for the Brewers on April 18, and by May 1 he had set another record: baseball's highest-ever RBI (2,212). Aaron took his final at-bat, hitting a single, on October 3, 1976, in Milwaukee County Stadium. He was 42 years old. Six years later he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, receiving 97.83 percent of the votes cast. Only Ty Cobb has received a higher percentage of votes.

Immediately after his retirement, Aaron rejoined the Atlanta Braves—this time as a player-development manager in the team's minor-league farm system. American media mogul Ted Turner, who had purchased the Braves in 1976, had invited Aaron to take the job. Here he helped develop such Braves talent as Tom Glavine and David Justice. It was not long before Aaron was asked to manage the major league team. In 1990 he became a baseball executive, named senior vice president and assistant to the president of the Braves. A budding businessman, Aaron also served as a board member for the Braves and for Turner Broadcasting System (TBS), and as vice president of business development for the CNN Airport Network.

Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Aaron has been very active in community services and philanthropy; his partner in these ventures is his wife, Billye Aaron (his marriage to first wife Barbara Lucas ended in divorce in 1971). Aaron's 1991 autobiography, I Had a Hammer, made the New York Times bestseller list, while Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream, a 1995 TBS documentary about the player's life, received an Academy Award nomination. In 1999, at a celebration marking Aaron's 65th birthday, Major League Baseball introduced the Hank Aaron Award, presented annually to the best hitters in the American League and the National League. Also in the late 1990s, Aaron and his wife established the Hank Aaron Chasing the Dream Foundation, to help boys and girls ages 9 to 12 pursue their dreams. A statue of Aaron, cast in the mid-1990s, graces the courtyard at the entrance to Turner Field, home of the Atlanta Braves.

SELECTED WRITINGS BY AARON:

(With Lonnie Wheeler) I Had a Hammer. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

"Hank Aaron." Notable Black Men. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1998.

Periodicals

Hinckley, David. "Hank Did More Than Hit Homers." (New York) Daily News (July 7, 2002): 10.

Sandomir, Richard. "Of Home Runs and History." New York Times (April 12, 1995): C24.

Other

"Hank Aaron." BaseballLibrary.com. http://www.pubdim.net/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/A/Aaron_Hank.stm (November 13, 2002).

"Hank Aaron." National Baseball Hall of Fame. http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/hofer_bios/aaron_hank.htm (November 12, 2002).

"Hank Aaron Statistics." Baseball Almanac. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/player.php?p=aaronha01 (November 19, 2002).

"The Hank Aaron Timeline." Sporting News. http://www.sportingnews.com/archives/aaron/timeline.html (November 14, 2002).

Schwartz, Larry. "Hank Aaron: Hammerin' Back at Racism." ESPN.com. http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00006764.html (November 12, 2002).

Tavis Smiley. National Public Radio (October 30, 2002).

Sketch by Wendy Kagan