Remembering Legendary MLB Home Run Hitter Hank Aaron

Today marks a very special day as it marks the 87th birthday of one of the greatest legends to ever grace the sport of baseball, Hank Aaron. Aaron passed exactly two weeks ago today at the age of 86 in Atlanta, Ga. The legacy he created in that city and with the Braves franchise as a whole, however, will live on forever.

On April 8, 1974, the largest crowd in Atlanta Braves history (53,775) packed in to witness history. In a prior game, Aaron would homer off Cincinnati’s Jack Billingham, tying Babe Ruth’s record at 714. A teary-eyed Aaron would emerge as he rounded third base.

Later in a phone call to his mother he said, “I’m going to save the next one for you, Mom.” With the “next one,” a 6 ft 180 lb. As over 50,000 eyes peered on “Hammerin’ Hank,” it would break Babe Ruth’s home run record in one sweet swing. The extraordinary outfielder had sealed the record at 715 off Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander Al Downing in the fourth inning.

This was only the beginning, as Aaron would hit 24 or more home runs every year from 1955-1973 and is the only player to hit 30 or more home runs in a season at least fifteen times. Aaron would retire with a total of 755 home runs, a record that stood for more than 33 years, more plainly put over three decades until Barry Bonds surpassed it in 2007.

Aaron, however, was always excited about those that would come after him and their potential to be just as great. He once said, “I am hoping someday that some kid, Black or white, hits more home runs than me. Whoever it shall be, I will be pulling for them.”

After retiring in 1976, Aaron’s 23-year-long career would be topped with 624 doubles, 2,297 RBI, 2,174 runs, 3,771 hits, and 240 stolen bases.

As an African American in a white-dominated sport, surpassing a white man’s record probably seen all but possible to a young Hank Aaron. A Hank Aaron who as a boy remembered his mom telling him, “Son, go hide under the bed” as the Ku Klux Klan would march by their home, burn a cross and then ‘go on about their business.’

Born Henry Louis Aaron into a poor seven kid family in a small segregated Mobile, AL neighborhood, Aaron would get his baseball start hitting bottle caps with sticks. He’d go on to quit school after winning the Mobile Negro High School Championship his freshman and sophomore years.

Aaron would have a one-year stint in the Negro Leagues before leading his club to a win in the league’s 1952 World Series. The Milwaukee Braves would snag him the following June for $10,000.

He would lead Braves to back-to-back World Series Appearances between 1957 and 1858, earning the National League MVP award in 1957, in which the Braves defeated the New York Yankees. Aaron would go on to become a three-time Gold Glove winner in 1958, 1959, and 1960.

Additionally, he’d be crowned the NL batting champion in 1956 and 1959. ‘Hammer “Hank”’ would expand his resume as a 4x NL home run leader in 1957, 1960, 1963, and 1969 as well as a 4x NL RBI leader in 1957,1960,1963, and 1966.

As a 25-time All-Star, the most of any player in history, Hank Aaron still remains to this day one of the greatest to ever play the game of baseball. Even boxing legend Muhammad Ali once called Hank Aaron “The only man I idolize more than myself.”

Aaron was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, Aaron’s first year of eligibility. He’d receive 97.8 percent of the vote, just nine votes shy of a unanimous decision.

Similar to the experience of Jackie Robinson, Aaron’s career was riddled with racial injustice. He’d receive countless hate mail along with threats to end not only his life but his children’s as well.

In a 2019 interview with FOX Sports South, Aaron said, “Sometimes you sit down, and you want to cry about it, you think about it, and you say what did I do to make people have this kind of hate toward me. For a year and a half, I couldn’t open a letter. They wouldn’t allow me to open mail because every piece of mail I had was opened by the Secret Service, people like that. It was hard, I had to go into the back of the ballparks instead of going out the front of the ballpark. Tough situation for me, for a while.”

Aaron would openly speak on the fact that he would simply forge forward because he wanted to ensure opportunity for those that would come after him as Jackie Robinson had done for him as he was just a 13 year-old-boy when Robinson became the first African American to enter the MLB in 1942.

“I feel especially proud to be standing here where some years ago Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella proved the way and made it possible for Frank [Robinson] and me and for other Black hopefuls in baseball,” Aaron said in his 1982 Hall of Fame Induction speech. “They proved to the world that a man’s ability is limited only by his lack of opportunity.”

In 1976, his first year of retirement, Aaron would join the Atlanta Braves in a new way. He would become the first African American to hold a senior management position in baseball as Vice President. His role would be centered around overseeing player development, where he was widely viewed as a statesman by those he impacted.

As a longtime advocate of civil rights organizations such as the NAACP, Aaron and his wife Billye would make their own personal mark of progress. In 1994, they founded the Chasing the Dream Foundation. Their objective was simple: that all young people, no matter the color of their skin or where they come from, have someone that not only sees their potential but cultivates it as well.

He would be crowned with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002 by George W. Bush for his efforts to forward equality and civil rights.

His legacy still lives on even after his passing on January 22, 2021, as the Atlanta Braves organization has pledged to only further what Aaron started.

On January 27, 2021, the Atlanta Braves launched a $2 million diversity fund in Aaron’s honor to increase minority participation among players, managers, coaches, and front-office personnel.

On February 5, 2021, ‘Hank’ Aaron’s birthday, the Braves announced the Henry Aaron Fellowship, a year-long executive leadership program. Braves’ hope is to create a platform for a diverse range of future industry leaders and to build on the legacy of Hank Aaron.

In a statement, Braves chairman Terry McGuirk said, “We want to continue Hank’s amazing work in growing diversity within baseball now and in the years to come.”

No doubt for Hank Aaron, his biggest legacy won’t be about the numbers he put up, but the legacy he left behind. Aaron once said, “I’m not concerned about how I am perceived as a baseball player. I am concerned about how I am thought of as a human being.”

For more visit Talking Points Sports.