Hank Aaron was My First Baseball Hero But for More Than Just Baseball

I was eight years old when Henry “Hank” Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record. It was quite the occasion and so was beamed live via the miracle of network television.

I remember thinking he didn’t look like I thought he would. Back in those days we didn’t have the internet or 24 hour news cycle. Ted Turner was still working on starting his cable empire.

No, the talk via radio news snippets or on ABC’s Wide World of Sports was my principal source of information. So again, I was limited in resources.

It’s possible I thought Aaron would be a white guy. I don’t know. Again, I was eight. The beautiful thing about being eight and living in my household, was the absence of racial derision. We didn’t have it. Thank God we didn’t have it.

I think mainly I expected Hank Aaron to be a huge guy. You know, like Barry Bonds would unnaturally turn out thirty years later. But Aaron didn’t come across that way. He just seemed an average size fellow, who as it turned out was a phenomenal hitter.

Most baseball writers would proclaim Aaron a “natural” whose hand eye coordination was such that he magically hit more home runs than anyone in history. In reality “The Hammer” would spend hours studying opposing pitchers.

It’s what we don’t know about Hank Aaron and baseball which is most interesting. For instance, he didn’t like the nickname “Hank.” He preferred Henry. A public relations person came up with Hank.

Later he would be called Hammering Hank. Hammering Henry would have worked out as well. Oh well that’s a publicist for you.

In Aaron’s book, “I had a Hammer” he outlines a tremendous amount of racism he occurred during his years in professional baseball.

Dateline Jacksonville: Seven years after Aaron played there, black people were still being beaten in the streets, for peacefully protesting “Whites Only” lunch counters.

Unlike Jackie Robinson, who broke the race barrier a few years earlier with the Dodgers, Aaron and three other players of color broke a different race barrier in the deep Jim Crow South.

Yeah, exactly.

In 1953 Aaron was 19 years old and sent to play in previously white only minor league baseball cities. If you think Augusta, Macon and Savannah Georgia or Columbia and Charleston South Carolina were a pleasant spot for a Black man, you would be incorrect.

As you can imagine, finding hotel rooms and restaurants were no easy task. And playing for his team, based in Jacksonville Florida, wasn’t much easier. Florida, at the time, led the country in per capita lynchings of Black people.

But that one and only year, in the Deep South minor league, would not be the worst racism Henry Aaron would face. As a matter of fact, it could barely compare to the outward vitriol in letters written to him some twenty years later, as he approached Babe Ruth’s record of 714.

When the season ended in 1973, Aaron had hit 713 home runs. Just one short of the record. He’d broken another record however, 900,000 fan mail letters. Not all of them however were good. In fact hundreds of them spewed racial hate and death threats. He would spend the off season in fear for his and his family’s lives.

Even the white Jewish lady who sorted, opened and read the letters for the Braves received death threats for just being associated with Aaron.

Aaron, however, would keep those letters, some with KKK references, others declaring him a “black animal” in his attic. And he would use those letters from time to time as inspiration to stand up for what is good in our country, and what needed to be changed in our country.

Here’s something else you may not have known. Professional baseball was integrated prior to Jackie Robinson. Yep. It’s true.

Moses Fleetwood Walker, seated, was one of the first black Americans to be signed to a major league contract. His brother, standing, followed him.

Fifty or so years prior to his entry, black players were actively playing professional baseball. That was until a first baseman from Chicago, Cap Anson began boycotting the inclusion of those players.

It made headlines. And kind of like a guy on a corner with a sign saying “Equal Rights for Whites,” over time, it was effective. By the early 1890s, no black players remained in the game.

Cap Anson is in Cooperstown as the greatest player-manager of the 19th Century. There is no mention of his boycotts.

Yeah. Exactly.

Everyone thinks of equal rights as a straight line in progression. It is not. Throughout our history we’ve taken steps forward only to later take more steps backwards. And we must be aware of this, not only for African Americans, but for women and for the LGBTQ community.

Hammering Henry Aaron is in the Hall of Fame too, but thankfully nowhere near that guy, and he has the numbers and letters to prove it.