Henry Aaron Beats Babe Ruth

[EddieP]

From the WaPo:
Full article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...h-anniversary/

ATLANTA — Take a spin along Hank Aaron Drive here, hook a couple of right turns, and pull inside Georgia State University’s red parking lot, where you will find an original section of the left field wall from old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, commemorating where Henry Aaron’s 715th home run ball landed.
Here stands an abandoned, neglected artifact of the moment April 8, 1974, when Aaron surpassed an almost mythical figure in Babe Ruth and cemented himself as a cultural icon. Nearly 30 years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier and showed a Black man belonged, Aaron shattered the most prestigious record in sports, showing a Black man could be the standard-bearer.
“It might be a ballplayer as good as him,” former teammate Ralph Garr says, “but nobody’s better.”

Trash cans greet a visitor at the marker in late March, only days before the city prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first time it was the center of the sports world. The paint on the wall behind the sign that reads “715” has faded. Aaron’s blue No. 44 — one wooden 4 atop another — is indistinguishable from the surrounding rubbish without a closer inspection.
The spot represents how much Atlanta and everywhere else has moved on from that blast. Aaron’s home run traveled 385 feet off his 33.5-ounce Louisville Slugger, and roughly the same distance away, just over the wall representing the since-demolished stadium, is the Olympic Cauldron Tower, which held the ceremonial flame lit by Muhammad Ali before the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Glance over to your right, and there are luxury apartments bearing the name Hank, underscoring the population boom the city has experienced since the Braves arrived from Milwaukee in 1966. The team would become a fixture in the Deep South, led by a Black man from Mobile, Ala.

Even as his pursuit of 715 brought unimaginable vitriol upon him and even as his triumph launched him into a realm of unassailable titans, Aaron didn’t want to be defined by a number. His power gave him the record, and his record gave him power, which he used to empower others and become a living monument to strength and perseverance.
“Athletes are not really celebrated for their legacy. They’re celebrated for their accomplishments. Sport — he transcended that,” says Allan Tanenbaum, Aaron’s longtime attorney and friend.
Aaron died three years ago at 86, and his power continues to have a hold — on the teammates he shared his greatness with, on the athletes who followed the pathways he mowed down and on the city he made a home until the end.

The teammates
Dusty Baker was kneeling at the on-deck circle before Aaron took Los Angeles Dodgers lefty Al Downing deep, concluding what had become a taxing journey.
Aaron, who taught himself to play with a broomstick and bottle caps, was about to break a record that was set by a White man before the game was integrated. The attention Aaron received as he approached Ruth made him uncomfortable, mostly because he would rather not be bothered but also because his excellence infuriated racists.
He was no stranger to hateful behavior, having grown up in the segregated South. Andrew Young, the former mayor of Atlanta and U.N. ambassador and a longtime friend of Aaron’s, remembers Aaron telling him the story of playing across the street from their home in Alabama, when his mother, Estella, called on 12-year-old Henry and his siblings to come inside and get under the bed. She peeked out the window as the Ku Klux Klan rode by on horseback; she sent her children back outside once the mob was gone.
But the hatred and death threats nonetheless left Aaron shaken, particularly after someone threatened to kidnap his daughter Gaile. Baker and Garr could see the pain on his face when he would read a letter, ball it up and walk out of the clubhouse to be with his thoughts. Sometimes Baker would check the trash can to see what upset him.

Aaron already had won a World Series, a National League MVP award, four home run and RBI titles apiece and two batting crowns before Garr and Baker were called up to the majors in 1968. Baker says Aaron had always been “our protector,” fighting on behalf of his teammates when something wasn’t right, and this was their turn to shield him. “We tried to help him. Just stay loose and laugh,” Baker says. “Just be there for company. That was a lonely time.”
“The story goes,” Tanenbaum says, “that Ralph said, ‘Somebody’s shooting the bullet around here; it’s going to come through me first.’ ”
Garr points out that more people wanted to see Aaron make history than didn’t. But those letters were still coming, and Aaron still needed a bodyguard, Calvin Wardlaw, because threats on his life couldn’t be dismissed as idle when his last NL home run title came just months before Martin Luther King Jr., a friend of Aaron’s, was assassinated.
So after walking in his first at-bat of the Braves’ home opener, Aaron stepped to the plate in the fourth inning and told Baker, “I’m going to get it over with right now.”
Baker had no reason to doubt him. “He made up his mind,” he says.

Aaron rounded first into history, and two teenage fans joined him. Wardlow, having determined they were harmless, kept his .38 caliber pistol at his hip. After a long embrace from his parents and a full 11-minute pause to celebrate the moment, Aaron held the ball high for an adoring, sellout crowd of 53,775 that included Young, Sammy Davis Jr. and Pearl Bailey.
But the smile that spread across Aaron’s face didn’t necessarily reflect happiness. “It should have been a very joyous moment. It wasn’t,” Baker says. “It was more of a relief then than anything.”
That would be Aaron’s last season in Atlanta; he would return to Milwaukee to play the final two years of his career with the Brewers. Aaron retired as the all-time leader in home runs, RBI, total bases and extra-base hits. The latter three marks remain untouched, and even though Barry Bonds bested Aaron’s final tally of 755 home runs, only one number will resonate and reverberate for generations.
Baker says he never heard Aaron mention 715 after that night — not even to joke about how good he was.
“He taught us humility,” Baker says. “Being humble on the outside and cocky as you want on the inside.”

The next generations
Life after baseball didn’t have to be a worry for Aaron because Ted Turner, the Braves’ new owner, had already promised him a place in the organization once he retired. Aaron held several front-office roles, including farm director when the Braves drafted Chipper Jones and Tom Glavine, core members of Atlanta’s first championship team in 1995.

[jimq16415]

Hard to believe that was 50 years ago. I remember the TV stations breaking in every time he batted, I was 12 then so I really didn't understand what a big deal it was.

And every thread needs a card. It's newer but I'm happy to have it.

[Schlesinj]

A few snaps.

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