Well, it took me 17 years to get 3,000 hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course. – Henry Aaron
By Gary Wade
Appeared in Cityview Magazine, Vol. 42, Issue 2 (March/April 2026)
Henry Louis Aaron died on January 22nd, 2021 — two weeks short of his 87th birthday. During this man’s time on Earth, he had quietly become one of the best to ever play the game of baseball. For many in the Baby Boomer generation, his death represented not only one more step in the gradual disappearance of a glorious era in the sport, but it also served as a reminder of lost youth.
For over a hundred years after the Civil War, well before professional basketball, football and hockey, baseball reigned as America’s national pastime. The invention of the radio sparked interest in the game, permitting stations across the country to offer live broadcasts — play-by-play. Over time, practically every newspaper included “daily box scores” – a statical summary of every game and its individual performances — for both the National and the American Leagues. From the early spring until the World Series in October, the sport commanded the attention of fans across the nation. In the days the World Series games were played in the afternoon, some schools would close early rather than risk a roomful of distracted students. Not even two world wars suspended play in the United States. American heroes of the past included Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Walter Johnson, Rogers Hornsby, and so many others. By the 1940s, the likes of Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Bob Feller, and Joe DiMaggio had become the most notable stars.
On April 15, 1947, the baseball world changed. Jackie Robinson made history, integrating the National League by starting at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Branch Rickey, the managing partner of the team, had dared to break the color barrier by signing Robinson — a former all-around athlete at Southern Cal, a military veteran, and a star player in the Negro Leagues. Fittingly, some three months later, the Cleveland Indians integrated the American League by inserting center fielder Larry Doby into their starting lineup.
As notable as these achievements were, there was a downside. Wealthy organizations like New York, Cleveland, and other big cities began to drain the Negro Leagues of not only their veteran star players like Satchel Paige and Monte Irvin, but also their younger phenoms, who would later become dominating forces in the major leagues. For example, Willie Mays, who played for the Birmingham Black Barons from 1948 to 1950, signed with the New York Giants. Then, in 1951, teenager “Hank” Aaron, who had spent only three months with the Indianapolis Clowns, signed a contract with the Boston Braves. While opening the leagues’ doors to all races was cause for celebration, it signaled the end of a league that previously had been the only alternative for the best of all black baseball players and their fans.
Born to a poor family living just outside of Mobile, Alabama, Aaron had begun to develop his athletic skills at an early age by hitting bottle caps with a stick. The boys in his neighborhood equipped themselves by making “bats and balls” from materials they found on the streets. Eventually, he and his friends graduated to real bats, balls, and gloves. Aaron quietly excelled. In 1949, two years after Robinson’s debut, a 15-year-old Hank tried out for the Dodgers but was not offered a contract. Despite his habit of batting cross-handed (left-hand on top for a right-handed hitter), opposite the traditional manner, he played well enough to be employed by an independent team. The Pritchard Athletics paid this future major league superstar the princely sum of $2 per game. In the following summer, young Hank moved to the Mobile Black Bears, earning a raise to $3 per game. When the season ended, he was hired to play the following year for the Negro League’s Clowns — at $200 a month, but that was six months away. With a couple of dollars, two sandwiches and a one-way bus ticket, he traveled from his Alabama home to Indianapolis the next spring, hoping to make his living in the sport of baseball. In 26 games there, he compiled a batting average of .366 and launched five home runs, statistics that attracted talent scouts from the National League Giants and Braves. Each team offered a signing bonus of $10,000 to play in their minor leagues, but Aaron chose the Braves, who were willing to pay $50 more each month in salary.
During his time in the Braves’ minor leagues, Aaron learned to hold the bat the standard way (right hand on top), a change that led to a remarkable .336 batting for the Braves’ affiliate in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He was selected to the All-Star team and named Rookie of the Year. Overcoming homesickness and regular doses of discrimination, Aaron agreed to accept a promotion in 1953, becoming the first black player in the South Atlantic League. Still in the minors, his organization assigned him to the Jacksonville Braves based on the belief that Aaron possessed the temperament to withstand the inevitable taunts from southern players and fans. As the team traveled to places like Montgomery, Charleston, and Savannah, Aaron was regularly separated from his teammates, being denied lodging in segregated hotels and meals in segregated restaurants. While hurt, of course, he elected not to voice his complaints. On the field, the young infielder led the league in hits, runs, and runs batted. No one came close to his batting average of .362. After Hank was named the league’s most valuable player, one sportswriter quipped, “He led the minor leagues in everything but hotel accommodations.” By then, the owners of his major league club had moved the team from Boston to Milwaukee.
After spending the following winter in the Puerto Rican league learning to play the outfield, Aaron was invited to the Braves’ major league spring training site in 1954. Bobby Thompson, who had been acquired by the Braves from the Giants in the offseason, broke his leg prior to the season. Incidentally, Thompson, old-timers might remember, had gained fame by slugging the game-winning home run in the 1951 playoff game against the Dodgers , “the shot heard ‘round the world.” The Braves replaced Thompson with Hank, who thereafter never left the starting lineup. In the ensuing years, he led the league in home runs, won a batting title, was named an All-Star (a record 25 times), and helped his team win a World Series championship. While signed to his contract when the team was still in Boston, he played for the Braves’ franchise only after it moved first to Milwaukee – 1954 through ‘65 — and then to Atlanta from ‘66 through ‘74. By the time of his retirement, “Hammerin’ Hank” hit for more total bases in his career and drove in more runners than anyone in baseball history.
“‘There’s a new home run champion of all time,’ Milo Hamilton shouted, ‘and it’s Henry Aaron.’”
The legendary Babe Ruth had held the lifetime record for home runs for over 40 years. During his colorful tenure in the sport, he had slugged 714 home runs—a record that most assumed would never be broken. No one had ever even come close … until Aaron. After the 1972 season, Hank’s total stood at 673, but on the opening day of the ’73 season, Aaron was 39, an age at which almost all major leaguers had long since “hung up his spikes.” For baseball fanatics who had admired Aaron’s accomplishments but viewed Ruth as the one and only baseball “god,” the chase for 715 made the season one of the most memorable ever. Playing for a mediocre team, Hank was no longer the swift outfielder of his youth. Stolen bases and running first to third on base hits were no longer in his repertoire. In order to save his once spry legs, he most often skipped the second game of doubleheaders and occasionally played first base instead of his customary role in the outfield. But he could still hit. Playing in only 120 of the Braves 162 games, his fewest ever, he somehow smacked 40 more home runs going into the last game of the year. He only needed one more to tie the immortal Babe’s 714. Meanwhile, and unknown to fans, he was receiving thousands of letters each week. Most were encouraging, but many contained death threats. True to his nature, Aaron carried on with dignity throughout the ordeal. The Braves took precautions, but security can never be foolproof with huge crowds at each game, home or away.
Ironically, the last contest of the “73 year was against the Houston Astros, managed by 68-year-old Leo “the Lip” Durocher, a one-time teammate of none other than Babe Ruth. Durocher, perhaps out of loyalty to his late pal as some speculated, would not allow his pitchers to throw over the plate on the inside, where Aaron might be able to “pull” with power toward left field. Recognizing the strategy of his adversary, Hank simply banged out four base hits up the middle and to the opposite field, putting his season’s batting average over the magical .300 threshold for the last time in his long career.
For Aaron and the baseball world, the off-season seemed like forever. While his fans anxiously awaited the opportunity for his next home run, Aaron, the recipient of so many more threats over the winter, managed to survive until the opening day in Cincinnati in 1974. Sure enough, he homered off pitcher Jack Billingham, tying Ruth’s record, and then rounded the bases without incident. What a relief it must have been to the 40-year-old veteran. One more and he would own the record. Anticipating a sell-out crowd at their home opener in Atlanta, the Braves management kept Hank out of the lineup in the second game of the series. Naturally, the team wanted the record-breaker to be in front of the hometown Atlanta fans. In an odd twist, baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn intervened, ordering the Braves ownership to have him in the lineup for the third contest in the Cincinnati series– “in the interest of the integrity of the game,” he explained.
So, when Hank played that day, he failed to hit another four-bagger, purposeful or not. The team then returned to Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium to host the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers, the same franchise that had signed Robinson almost 30 years before. Pitching for the Dodgers was Al Downing, one of the first blacks to play for the New York Yankees before being acquired by the Dodgers. The stage was set for what was to become an epoch moment in baseball history. The April 8th game merited a prime time, national broadcast. A sellout crowd of almost 54,000 fans were in attendance. Downing walked Hank in his first at bat as the fans booed. They had come to see him swing the bat. Facing Aaron for a second time in the fourth inning and with his team holding a 3-1 lead, Downing threw “a sinker that didn’t sink,” as he described it later, and “The Hammer” swatted the pitch into the left-center field bullpen. “It’s gone,” broadcaster Milo Hamilton shouted, “There’s a new home run champion of all time, and it’s Henry Aaron!”
Tommy House, a Braves reliever, caught the ball on the fly and presented it to his slugging teammate in the celebration that followed. As Aaron rounded second base two young men – both white — ran onto the field, eluded security, and patted him on the back in congratulations. Teammates mobbed Hank as he safely, and finally, reached home plate. “I’m glad it’s all over” served as his single comment. The prized ball is now on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Footnotes to the contest are that the legendary Vin Scully called the game for Dodgers’ radio and that the Braves, managed by Eddie Mathews, Aaron’s former teammate and a Hall-of-Famer himself, won the game, 7-4.
In 1954 at just 20 years old, Aaron stepped into the major leagues and never left the starting lineup, beginning a career that would redefine power, consistency, and quiet greatness in American baseball.
Hank hit 18 more home runs that year, finishing with 733 for the Braves, still a league record for a single franchise. He spent the last one and one-half years as a designated hitter in Milwaukee, where his major league career began, for the American League Brewers. During his short time there, he pounded a total of 22 home runs, setting his final tally at 755. Although Aaron’ salary of $200,000 in each of those two years pales in comparison to the stars of today, it marked the highpoint of his annual earnings. From the streets of the segregated South to stardom in the major leagues, this private man, this hero to many, is a genuine “Home Run King.”
As a postscript, Barry Bonds, who took center stage in the steroid era — first for the Pirates and more notoriously for Giants later in his baseball career, reached a lifetime total of 762 home runs in 2007. No asterisk accompanies that number, but he and other players suspected of steroid use have so far been denied entry to the Hall of Fame.
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