Aaron, Hank

Source:

 African American National Biography

Aaron, Hank

(5 Feb. 1934– ),

baseball player and executive, was born Henry Aaron in the Down the Bay section of Mobile, Alabama, the third of eight children of Herbert Aaron and Estella (maiden name unknown). His parents had left the Selma, Alabama, area during the Depression for greater opportunity in Mobile's shipbuilding industries. In 1942, as the family grew and Down the Bay became more crowded with wartime job seekers, the Aarons moved to a rural suburb of Toulminville. Working as a boilermaker's apprentice, Herbert Aaron suffered through the frequent layoffs that plagued black shipyard workers before wartime demand dictated full employment. Ever resourceful, Herbert Aaron bought two lots in Toulminville, hired carpenters to frame out the roof and walls of a house, and set about with his family to find materials to finish the property. The Aarons continued to live in the house even as Henry achieved superstardom.

Making balls from such scavenged materials as tape and tin cans and using them by himself or in frequent games with his playmates, young Henry loved baseball. His younger brother Tommie became a professional player, later joining Hank on the Milwaukee Braves in 1962. While the big leagues were still a dream, Henry was developing the skills and techniques of success by tossing bottle caps into the air and hitting them with a broomstick. This regimen encouraged him to hit with his weight shifted to his front foot, a stance that resulted in the consistently good contact between ball and bat that set him apart from other hitters. From his earliest playing days, players and coaches wondered at the size and strength of Aaron's wrists. Henry's notable qualities were not limited to his batting stance, however. Herbert Aaron had instilled in his son qualities of pride, determination, and respect exercised without attracting attention. Henry later recounted that, when he left home to play baseball, his father told him that “nobody would want to hear what I had to say until I proved myself” (Aaron and Wheeler, 17).

Hank Aaron, Atlanta Braves' outfielder, bats during exhibition season. (AP Images.)

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After Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the major leagues in 1947, the thirteen-year-old Henry skipped school to listen to Brooklyn Dodgers broadcasts on a pool-hall radio. Five years later he left Alabama for Indiana to play for the Indianapolis Clowns in the Negro American League. Aaron's world expanded even further when the Major League Boston Braves purchased his contract from the Clowns in 1952. Having just missed out on signing Willie Mays, the Braves front office acted quickly with Aaron and sent him to their Class C Northern League farm team in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Despite bouts of homesickness and the difficulties of playing shortstop in the minor leagues, he fared well in Eau Claire. He hit .336 to finish second in the league, earning a trip to spring training in 1953 with the parent Braves club, now moved to Milwaukee. Reassigned to second base, Aaron was sent to the Class A Sally League team in Jacksonville after manager Ben Geraghty learned that he was willing to become the first black player in the league. Along with outfielder Horace Garner and shortstop Felix Mantilla, Aaron integrated the Deep South league. Geraghty respected and supported Aaron, who hit a league-leading .362 and won the Most Valuable Player award. That winter, Aaron began playing the outfield.

During the summer of 1953, Aaron met Barbara Lucas and enjoyed spending time with her family. The couple married on 6 October, and a daughter was born a year later. Four other children followed.

When the Braves left fielder Bobby Thomson broke his leg during spring training for the 1954 season, Aaron was given the opportunity to start in his place. He responded by hitting .280 and winning the job permanently. Clearly, the Braves had a bona fide major leaguer. During that first season, the Braves traveling secretary Donald Davidson began calling Henry “Hank,” and the name stuck. At the end of the season, Aaron requested a change from the number five he had been wearing, and in 1955 he began wearing number forty-four, the number he made famous.

Aaron performed well in 1955 and even better in 1956, when he hit .328 and won the National League batting title. Disappointment dominated his mood at season's end, however, when the Braves lost the pennant to the Dodgers in the final series. Determined to win the pennant his team had lost the previous year, Aaron had, arguably, his best year ever in 1957. Hitting a dramatic home run to win the pennant and playing solidly as the Braves defeated the New York Yankees to take the World Series, he won the National League's Most Valuable Player award.

Many observers wondered why Aaron, although the best hitter in baseball, was not regarded as an American superstar, as were Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. The issue is complex. Mantle's great popularity during the period might be attributed to his racial identity as a white man and to the greater opportunity for publicity afforded to those who played in New York. Mays enjoyed far greater adulation than Aaron, perhaps because of his more outgoing personality. At least part of the answer seems to lie in Aaron's personality: quiet, steady, workmanlike, balanced. Such steadfastness shouts no claims, calls no attention to itself. It exists; it endures.

Hank played well season after season and his home run totals accumulated, but the Braves suffered increasingly lean years following their glory days in Milwaukee, particularly after the club moved to Atlanta in 1966. Although Aaron experienced racist attitudes and behavior all his life, the tenor of abuse shifted once it was realized he had a chance to break Babe Ruth's career home run record. For some whites, the idea of a black man replacing Ruth as the home run king was too much to bear.

Pressures multiplied. Divorced from his first wife early in 1971, he married his second wife, Billye Williams, widow of the civil rights activist Dr. Sam Williams, late in 1973. During the 1973 season he hit a remarkable forty home runs in only 392 at bats, but threats on Aaron and his family increased. The FBI assigned agents to accompany Billye and the children. Aaron was often forced to eat by himself, and after he had received a particularly venomous death threat, he warned teammates not to sit next to him in the dugout. Somehow, though, he managed to concentrate on the game that he loved. Hank's friend Congressman John Lewis suggests that “Hank was shattering something. Sometimes I believe that maybe some force or some power gives you that extra ounce of grace” (Tolan, 169). Perhaps the example of his father and Jackie Robinson and the words of Martin Luther King Jr. gave Aaron the power to use his bat as his voice in overcoming racism in the United States.

Aaron broke Ruth's record on 8 April 1974, with his 715th home run. He increasingly used his place in the spotlight to press for greater equality, and in Atlanta he spoke his mind with increasing force. Buoyed when Frank Robinson became the first black manager in Major League Baseball in 1975, Aaron stressed the need for more African American managers and executives. However, Atlanta's chilly reaction to his push for black front-office candidates led Aaron to endorse a trade to the American League Milwaukee Brewers in 1975. After two seasons, he retired with 755 home runs. Aaron's home run record would last for 33 years until August 2007, when Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants struck his 756th home run.

In 1977 the Braves owner Ted Turner hired Aaron as an executive with responsibilities in the Braves farm system—the network of affiliated minor league teams that provides players for the major league team. As a Braves executive, Aaron served as an advocate for African American candidates and worked to eliminate racial barriers in sports, in part through partnerships with the NAACP, Operation PUSH, and Big Brothers/Big Sisters. He continued to work with such activists as Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson in establishing baseball, as not only America's national pastime, but also as a leading force in creating a more just society.

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