Henry Aaron is gone, and his life’s story is
Henry Aaron died on Friday morning, but the story of his life is already at risk. The number 755 is still revered, but the journey Henry Aaron took was being flattened in real-time on Friday, softening his edges into an ahistorical version of Hammerin’ Hank that doesn’t draw any blood. Dewrinkling and declawing Black heroes may take the appearance of a tribute, but diminishing Black pain erases the magnitude of Black achievement.
The Associated Press advanced this error by describing Aaron as a “baseball legend who endured racist threats with stoic dignity.” In their obituary, the AP wrote, “exuding grace and dignity, Aaron spoke bluntly but never bitterly on the many hardships thrown his way.”
ESPN’s Jeff Passan tweeted then deleted that Aaron “ignored hatred as he conquered baseball,” a pitiful choice of words for a man that has shared many times since retiring how deeply the hatred he encountered hurt and angered him. Worse was fellow Braves legend Chipper Jones, who wrote Aaron “had every right to be angry or militant ..... but never was,” thinking this as a compliment. “He spread his grace on everything and every one (sic) he came in contact with.” Like Passan, Chipper served a junkball and the crowd teed off.
I should be careful to dismiss “grace” and “class,” as they are true of Aaron’s life and virtues in and of themselves. But what these men misunderstand is that those virtues are forged into limitations, the only register in which a Black person can respond to the racism they experience without suffering the consequences of raising their voice.
Aaron could have told his white audience, all of ’em, to kiss his Black behind without losing a shred of his dignity and grace. On occasion, he nearly got there, like when he shoved a bowl of strawberries in a journalist’s face — a true story you can read in his autobiography — for portraying his wife, Billye, as a bad influence on his character. There is little he could do more dignified than standing. But showing up white folks often does not end well, something Aaron knew intimately as a child of the Jim Crow South and was reminded of every time he rounded the bases. So he didn’t. He couldn’t.
Passan and Jones’ language is best reserved for myth and fable, not flesh and blood. Not even Aaron’s home runs lasted forever. The Home Run King sent a video message to celebrate Barry Bonds when he seized his crown. Aaron’s mortality had to be on his mind: Baseball fans reminded him every day how quickly it would end if he touched them all one too many times.
Martin Luther King Jr. was far more oratorical (or mouthy, depending on your point of view) about race in America than Aaron was during his playing days — why King was murdered six years before Aaron seized Babe Ruth’s crown. Did you know that on Opening Day 1974 in Cincinnati, Aaron tried to commemorate Dr. King on the field with a moment of silence? “I should have known better,” Aaron wrote of the Reds’ inevitable rejection. A stoic response was not a virtue, but a survival skill.
Aaron dethroning Ruth dismantled arguments of Black inferiority. But in the next breath, he was conscripted into another of America’s insidious racial myths: the genteel Black martyr. White America is only comfortable reckoning with the victims of its racism when they politely turn the other cheek. When they are stoic. This is the cheap sentiment evident in pop culture, such as in “Green Book,” in which Mahershala Ali portrays real-life pianist Don Shirley as a vessel of patience and good manners, eventually convincing his bigoted driver to see him as a man. Black heroes, the myth says, are meant to nobly endure racism long enough for a white person to validate them.
Pop culture perpetuates the trope, and sportswriters get plenty of practice. Jackie Robinson was no stranger to this softening. Aaron’s barrier-breaking predecessor is exalted for his
caught Aaron’s record-breaking homer in the bullpen beyond the fence in left field at Atlanta Stadium.
“That moment bonded us forever as friends and teammates,” House posted on Twitter. “We watched Hank shrug off the weight of the world and just keep swinging.”
Former Commissioner Bud Selig reminisced of a recent visit to Washington with Aaron, whose final two seasons were with the Selig-owned Milwaukee Brewers.
“Not long ago, he and I were walking the streets of Washington, D.C, together and talking about how we’ve been the best of friends for more than 60 years,” Selig said. “Then Hank said, ‘Who would have ever thought all those years ago that a Black kid from Mobile, Alabama, would break Babe Ruth’s home run record and a Jewish kid from Milwaukee would become the commissioner of baseball?”’
Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine was a minor leaguer in the Atlanta system when he met Aaron.
“When I got drafted by the Braves I didn’t know a whole lot about Atlanta,” Glavine said, “but I knew Hank Aaron.”
Fellow Braves Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz celebrated every moment he spent around Aaron.
“You know, Hank was so unassuming. There is not a superstar I’ve ever been around that, A, went through as much as he did, both in life and in the game, and he just was a gentle guy that was there to say hello. You felt like you were in the presence of greatness every time you walked in,” he said.
Smoltz also cherished a special moment from a day in Cooperstown, New York.
“I think my memory of Hank is going to be two-fold. It’s going to be at the Hall of Fame, it was Hank Aaron, Joe Morgan, and Frank Robinson. They all had walkers. They were coming to take a picture down at the end of the lawn like we do every year at the Hall of Fame. Somebody started announcing them coming down like a race.
“You could see each one had that little desire, and I think Hank turned it on at the end and I think he ended up winning. So that’s three iconic people obviously beat up by baseball and life, and we’re just going to miss them,” he said.