Baseball star’s home run record made him a target for racist fans
‘‘Here we were in the capital in the land of freedom and equality, and they had to destroy the plates that had touched the forks that had been in the mouths of black men.’’
Hank Aaron
As Hank Aaron jogged around the bases after hitting the 715th home run of his career, two white men invaded the field and charged at him. Until they slapped the baseball star on the back it was unclear whether they planned to congratulate him or kill him.
Aaron’s 1973-74 pursuit of the Major League Baseball home run record set by Babe Ruth in 1935 became the biggest story in American sport and a touchstone in the country’s anguished race relations.
They were temperamental opposites. Ruth was an outsize slugger with Falstaffian appetites; the wiry Aaron, who has died in his sleep aged 86, was reserved and disciplined, wary of crowds and attention. It was paramount to some that Ruth was white and Aaron was black.
‘‘The Ruth chase should have been the greatest period of my life, and it was the worst. I couldn’t believe there was so much hatred in people,’’ Aaron wrote in his 1991 autobiography. At the height of the frenzy he received 3000 letters a day. Most were supportive; many were not.
Some contained death threats, which often opened with the n-word: ‘‘If you hit one more home run it will be your last. My gun is watching your every black move.’’ One wished him ‘‘a heart attack on the field’’.
Aaron’s parents received anonymous calls warning them that they would never see their son again. The FBI read his mail and assigned undercover officers to protect his daughter at her university campus because of a kidnapping threat.
His team hired off-duty police officers to protect him. One sat in the stands with a pistol hidden in a binoculars case. Aaron never left his apartment except to go to the stadium, and warned teammates not to sit too close to him in the dugout for their own safety.
After he hit the historic home run in Atlanta on April 8, 1974, he was mobbed by his Atlanta Braves teammates and his mother hugged him tightly. She later said that she wrapped her body around him as protection in case he was targeted by a sniper.
Aaron lived in two Americas, parallel and contradictory: a meritocratic land of wealth and opportunity, yet one in which skin colour was a defining characteristic. He signed a million-dollar sponsorship deal and companies scrambled to put his name on merchandise from cups and pens to a branded gearstick knob.
He was invited to Sammy Davis Jr’s Beverly Hills mansion to discuss a movie proposal. President Nixon called to offer congratulations for his feat. Still, Aaron stopped to buy vegetables at a roadside stand in Georgia and was recognised by a farmer who condescendingly called him ‘‘boy’’.
In 2007, Aaron’s home run record was surpassed by the San Francisco Giants’ Barry Bonds, who ended his career with 762. Because of Bonds’ alleged use of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs, many baseball fans and writers continue to regard Aaron as the true home run champion.
One of eight children, Henry Louis Aaron was born into poverty in Mobile, Alabama, to Estella (nee Pritchett) and Herbert, a labourer. Skinny but strong, he honed his reflexes catching snakes in the woods.
He left aged 18 to join the Indianapolis Clowns, a team in the segregated Negro league. He was soon signed by the majorleague Boston Braves and sent to develop in minor league games in the south.
While training at a former military base in Georgia, he went into town for a haircut but missed the last bus back. On a shortcut through the woods, a guard assumed he was a trespasser and shot at him, narrowly missing. During games verbal abuse, and sometimes projectiles, rained down from the stands.
Aaron worked for the Braves as an executive and ran car dealerships and fastfood franchises after retiring from playing. He met his first wife, Barbara Lucas, in Florida. They married in 1953; the union ended in divorce in 1971.
He remarried two years later, to Billye (nee Suber). They met when she interviewed him in her role as a television presenter in Atlanta. She survives him along with four children from his first marriage.
Aaron kept some of the hate mail as a reminder that, while America had made progress towards equality, there remained far to go. Some wounds left scars. He recalled kitchen staff smashing plates after the Clowns players ate in a restaurant in Washington.
‘‘Even as a kid, the irony of it hit me,’’ he told the Orlando Sentinel. ‘‘Here we were in the capital in the land of freedom and equality, and they had to destroy the plates that had touched the forks that had been in the mouths of black men. If dogs had eaten off those plates, they’d have washed them.’’