Henry's parents were feted as celebrities, pioneers of the American dream. They would sit next to Bill Bartholomay and Governor Carter, who was formulating a bid to rescue a wounded presidency, but amid the festivities, while Herbert offered levity, Stella was too focused on the miles she had traveled and their unique, bitter terrain-her own as much as Henry's-to be folksy.
"I'm just proud of the whole black race," she said to an interviewer. "That's what I'm really proud of."
WALTER A ALSTON DID not say a word to his team about the record during the pregame meeting. The Dodgers were a stoic team, unwilling to play the role of stick figures in Henry's potential night of drama. As was the baseball custom before the first game of any series, the Dodgers went over the Atlanta scouting report with the pitching staff, and Al Downing, the night's starter, winced at what he perceived to be a whiff of the old racism that had been an insuperable ingredient of baseball soil. With regard to each of the black players in the lineup, the report echoed variations on the same theme, to pitch them in, on the hands. Invariably, someone in the meeting would say, "Garr, he doesn't like being pitched high and tight," or "Make sure you crowd Baker. That makes him uncomfortable." To Downing, the words were another not say a word to his team about the record during the pregame meeting. The Dodgers were a stoic team, unwilling to play the role of stick figures in Henry's potential night of drama. As was the baseball custom before the first game of any series, the Dodgers went over the Atlanta scouting report with the pitching staff, and Al Downing, the night's starter, winced at what he perceived to be a whiff of the old racism that had been an insuperable ingredient of baseball soil. With regard to each of the black players in the lineup, the report echoed variations on the same theme, to pitch them in, on the hands. Invariably, someone in the meeting would say, "Garr, he doesn't like being pitched high and tight," or "Make sure you crowd Baker. That makes him uncomfortable." To Downing, the words were another230 insinuation that black players, even twenty-seven years after Robinson's big-league debut, were somehow less mentally and physically tough than their white counterparts, that black hitters could be intimidated in ways whites could not, that their wills, even after all this time and so much truth to the contrary, were easily broken. He asked himself, Which hitters out there insinuation that black players, even twenty-seven years after Robinson's big-league debut, were somehow less mentally and physically tough than their white counterparts, that black hitters could be intimidated in ways whites could not, that their wills, even after all this time and so much truth to the contrary, were easily broken. He asked himself, Which hitters out there do do like to be pitched high and tight? And for the life of him, Downing couldn't come up with an answer. like to be pitched high and tight? And for the life of him, Downing couldn't come up with an answer.
Like Jack Billingham and Henry, Downing and Henry had a history. Downing had surrendered home runs number 676 and 693 to Henry. The two had met eleven years earlier, in Florida during spring training, when Downing was a rookie with the Yankees. Elston Howard, the Yankee catcher, had introduced Downing to Henry, who by that time was already a big star. Henry sized up the young pitcher quietly, shook his hand, before calling out to a reporter for a spare piece of paper and a pen. Henry scribbled quickly on the paper and handed it to Downing. "If there's anything I can ever do for you,"231 Henry told Downing that day, "give me a call. Good luck to you." Henry told Downing that day, "give me a call. Good luck to you."
Downing's nickname was "Ace." He had been raised in Trenton, New Jersey, by his father and two aunts after his mother was killed in a car crash when he was seven years old. From the start, he was considered a special talent: left-handed and fast. Downing's America consisted of integrated schools in New Jersey and integrated traveling baseball teams. When he was fourteen, he played on a traveling team that fielded two other blacks. When the team arrived in Frederick, Maryland, Al and his black teammates, William Crossland and Arnold Thomas, were told there were no rooms for them at the hotel and that the three boys would have to find a rooming house for blacks in a different part of town.
"One night, someone brought up the idea232 that we should go to the movies, not even thinking that this policy existed socially in every aspect of the city. So we get to the movies and we pay for our tickets and the usher looked at me and the other two black players and said, 'You three have to sit in the balcony and you guys can go downstairs,'" Downing recalled. "All the white guys on the team just looked at us and said, 'They go to the balcony, we'll go to the balcony.' That was a moment when I knew how special those guys were, and then we all went up to the balcony and we watched the movie." that we should go to the movies, not even thinking that this policy existed socially in every aspect of the city. So we get to the movies and we pay for our tickets and the usher looked at me and the other two black players and said, 'You three have to sit in the balcony and you guys can go downstairs,'" Downing recalled. "All the white guys on the team just looked at us and said, 'They go to the balcony, we'll go to the balcony.' That was a moment when I knew how special those guys were, and then we all went up to the balcony and we watched the movie."
Alston did not dwell on Henry in the pregame meeting. Steve Yeager, the brusque and unpredictable catcher, would recall years later that the scouting report on Henry contained just two words: his name. "Henry Aaron. What else did you need to say?233 I mean, he was Henry Aaron." Henry and Alston went back twenty years, since they were both rookies in the same season, 1954, Henry a twenty-year-old with the Braves, Alston taking over for a pennant-winning Dodgers club as a forty-two-year-old rookie manager. They were both monuments to an ancient species: baseball men who had served just one employer. As players, Alston and Aaron were polar opposites: Henry tapped for fame before he could legally drink alcohol, while Alston with career that consisted of exactly one inning and one at bat in the big leagues. The date was September 27, at Sportsman's Park, the last game of the 1936 season. I mean, he was Henry Aaron." Henry and Alston went back twenty years, since they were both rookies in the same season, 1954, Henry a twenty-year-old with the Braves, Alston taking over for a pennant-winning Dodgers club as a forty-two-year-old rookie manager. They were both monuments to an ancient species: baseball men who had served just one employer. As players, Alston and Aaron were polar opposites: Henry tapped for fame before he could legally drink alcohol, while Alston with career that consisted of exactly one inning and one at bat in the big leagues. The date was September 27, at Sportsman's Park, the last game of the 1936 season.
"Well, I came up to bat for the Cards in 1936 and Lon Warneke struck me out," he once said. "That's it."
Ironically, both entered the big leagues in 1954, both would retire in 1976, and both would one day be honored in Cooperstown. These days, Walt Alston resembled Charlie Grimm in Milwaukee, for somehow the Dodgers couldn't break free from second place. For the last four years, the Dodgers had been just good enough to go home, losing to Cincinnati in 1970, 1972 and 1973, and to the Giants in 1971. Pervading the 1974 club was a combination of frustration, desperation, and old-fashioned stubbornness. Mike Marshall was the club's newest acquisition, picked up from Montreal. Marshall was an iconoclast by nature and a progressive thinker, a combination that could put one on the fast track to becoming a baseball outcast. He had been raised in Michigan and attended Michigan State, earning a Ph.D. in kinesiology. If Ted Williams was fascinated by the science of hitting, Mike Marshall was passionate about the science of pitching mechanics. He was seeking to create a new pitching orthodoxy, to develop a new method of throwing a baseball that would no longer result in the ruin of a thousand pitching arms. He wanted, essentially, to reinvent the pitching wheel. Downing had been teammates with Marshall for only three months, but he loved listening to him talk about the pitching, about torque created through the shoulder and elbow, and its heavy price. Almost immediately, a semicircle of Dodger pitchers-Al Downing, Andy Messersmith, and Tommy John-began discussing their aches, pains, and tweaks with Marshall, quite often before approaching the team medical staff, a group whose best interests for the history of baseball had always been heavily weighed toward the team and not the player. Marshall's combination of advocacy and intellect not only made him controversial when it came to Dodger management; it made him dangerous. The Dodgers would go to the World Series in 1974 and Marshall would pitch 208 innings in relief, a modern-day record. He would win the Cy Young Award, but it was apparent that as quickly as he'd arrived, his days in Los Angeles were numbered. "He was too smart for them," Downing recalled. "If you had a knot in your shoulder, you'd run it by Mike, because he knew what he was talking about and he'd give it to you straight. They didn't like that kind of competition and immediately began to create a wedge between Mike and the rest of the ball club."
The season was a week old and Marshall had not yet assessed his new team.
"I had no idea who they were,234 or how they competed. You can be highly talented and once the season gets going, when the pressure mounts, the talent can go the other way, and I think that was what was happening on the Dodgers," Marshall recalled. "They had the best pitching, and an outstanding offense, maybe not in terms of home runs, but certainly in the number of ways they could score runs. It was a very strong team and I was hopeful. or how they competed. You can be highly talented and once the season gets going, when the pressure mounts, the talent can go the other way, and I think that was what was happening on the Dodgers," Marshall recalled. "They had the best pitching, and an outstanding offense, maybe not in terms of home runs, but certainly in the number of ways they could score runs. It was a very strong team and I was hopeful.
"In Montreal, I had been with Gene Mauch, and when we had a chance to win, he'd give me the ball and say, 'Let me know when it's over.' But there, I didn't pitch an inning in the first three games and I'm thinking, Why am I here? What I loved about Montreal was that it kept battling. What I had heard about the Dodgers was that there was lot of cross-blaming going on. My attitude had been that everyone does what they can and don't judge other people by what they can't do. We ended up becoming a very close-knit pitching staff, all mature people, not prone to getting overexcited."
Jimmy Wynn walked down the runway and into the visitors' dugout. He looked around the stadium at the placards-715 and WE WANT HANK- WE WANT HANK-as he stepped into the cage for batting practice. The atmosphere, he thought, was relatively quiet nevertheless. Bill Buckner, the Dodger left fielder, sprinted toward the fence and leaped once and then twice more. He was, he later admitted, practicing scaling the fence, just in case he'd need to rob Henry of his home run. The Dodger bull pen, located behind the right-field fence, was businesslike. Downing was already in the pen, warming up.
TONY K KUBEK, the Milwaukee native who had played so well for the Yankees against Henry and the Braves in the 1957 World Series, was now a broadcaster for NBC. Both he and his partner, the veteran Curt Gowdy, could feel the groundswell of the moment. "Everybody expects him to do it every time now.235 It's gotten that far out of proportion," Kubek said. "People won't take singles or even triples from Henry Aaron anymore. There's a lot of pressure on Henry. He's withstood it all." It's gotten that far out of proportion," Kubek said. "People won't take singles or even triples from Henry Aaron anymore. There's a lot of pressure on Henry. He's withstood it all."
The 53,775 in attendance roared when Ron Reed, the Braves hulking six-foot-six-inch, 230-pound right-hander-who, like Gene Conley, was another Braves pitcher who had played in the NBA-erased the Dodgers in the first. And they groaned when Downing, pitching carefully, walked Henry in the bottom of the second without even inducing a swing, his last two pitches very nearly in the dirt. The legendary Dodgers announcer Vin Scully, was on the call. Scully, Bronx-born, started his Dodgers broadcasting career in 1950, the same year that Henry was expelled from Central High and that the Phillies and Yankees competed in the last World Series to be played only by whites.
Henry begins to walk up to home plate.236 The crowd gives him a standing ovation and the familiar number 44 steps into the batters box. Joe Ferguson, mask on, but evidently said something, and Al Downing, who also wears 44, [ The crowd gives him a standing ovation and the familiar number 44 steps into the batters box. Joe Ferguson, mask on, but evidently said something, and Al Downing, who also wears 44, [who] sat on the bench when Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth's one-year mark with 61 home runs ... Downing doesn't want to walk Aaron. He doesn't want anyone to point the accusing fingers. He's just trying to pitch his game. Downing checking, Aaron waiting ... and the 31 pitch is outside, Downing ball four, so not right now, Henry.
The night existed for one moment, its tension enveloped in only one man, who would come to bat perhaps once every thirty-five minutes, maybe get a pitch to hit or maybe not, maybe do something with that pitch or maybe not. The rest of the game-the pitches, the swings, the people-the rest was just filler: Henry raced around third and scored on a double by Dusty Baker that Buckner bobbled. When Henry crossed the plate with his 2,063rd run of his career, he broke another record, passing Mays for the all-time National League mark. But tonight, nobody cared, nor did the crowd appear particularly pained that the home team was suddenly losing as the Dodgers rallied for three runs off of Reed in the top of the third. With the possible exception of the time Maris passed Ruth back in 1961, never had the events of the baseball game seemed more secondary.
It was also clear as the night progressed that there was only one other day in the history of baseball-April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson's debut in Brooklyn-when baseball so sharply held a mirror up to America, to its blacks and its whites and its generations and its change, reflecting what the nation was at that moment and what it was about to become. Sitting in the press box, Bob Hope could feel it, as could Jimmy Carter; Stella Aaron knew it: that the record was secondary to what it represented.
In center field, Jimmy Wynn, playing for the opposing team, had decided that he wanted Henry to hit a home run-on this night, now. Like Mike Marshall, Wynn had been focused only on assimilating with his new team and on what the Dodgers needed to do to beat Cincinnati, to finally win the division and get back to the World Series, a place Los Angeles had not been since 1966 when they were destroyed by Baltimore. At that time, Wynn was in Houston, the first star player for the old expansion Colt .45's, which by then would be known as the Astros. He had known Henry only slightly. The two had met briefly over the years, and Wynn respected Henry immensely. Wynn would recall that he did not think of Henry breaking the record until he'd reached 714, and then he began to assess Henry not in baseball terms but in historical context. He thought of his father, Joe Wynn, when Jimmy was a boy growing up in Cincinnati. Joe Wynn was a ballplayer first, playing in the industrial leagues in Ohio and Kentucky, but his generation could not dream of playing in the major leagues. Joe Wynn was the best player Jimmy had ever seen, and he had told his father he wanted to follow in his footsteps, to which the elder Wynn replied, "No, you have your own footsteps."237 In between pitches, Jimmy Wynn thought about his own road to the major leagues, and the humiliations he'd endured because he wanted to be a baseball player. On numerous occasions, when the environment grew too rough, he would turn to Big Joe Wynn for comfort and sometimes to plead with his father to return home. Joe Wynn was always unsympathetic, telling him, "You're in the world now."
Jimmy Wynn would remember a game in Palatka, Florida, which probably took place in 1962 or 1963 while he was playing for the Tampa Tarpons, a farm club of the Reds. Wynn was playing third base and a pair of whites in the stands catcalled out to him, "Hey, nigger, where's your tail?"
Wynn stared straight ahead.
"Hey, nigger, I'm talking to you."
The Tarpons manager, a white man named Herschel Freeman, called time to talk to his young third baseman.
"He asked me, 'Jimmy, are you all right?' I told him I was and I told him, 'Let's play baseball.' But these two just wouldn't stop," Wynn recalled. "They're throwing the N N word around and asking me where was my tail. They kept doing it, and finally, Herschel Freeman called time and went up into the stands and grabbed one of them and said, 'His name is Jimmy Wynn. If you don't want to call him that, then call him word around and asking me where was my tail. They kept doing it, and finally, Herschel Freeman called time and went up into the stands and grabbed one of them and said, 'His name is Jimmy Wynn. If you don't want to call him that, then call him Mr Mr. Wynn. If you don't want to call him that, then say nothing. And if you don't, I will will visit you once again.' visit you once again.'
"And the next words I heard from them were, 'Come on, Jimmy.'" In a flash, the dense, mythic fog of the evening-of who was the greater player or who, Ruth or Aaron, had the greater impact-began to clear and there was nothing left about the night of April 8, 1974, for Jimmy Wynn, the famed "Toy Cannon," except one crystallizing thought: "It wasn't about numbers. It wasn't even really about Babe Ruth. It was about him breaking a white man's record. Everything he went through was happening because he put himself in a position to break a white man's record. You see, that record, it belonged belonged to them, and in a lot of ways, to them, the ones who wrote those letters and said those things, Henry Aaron was taking it from to them, and in a lot of ways, to them, the ones who wrote those letters and said those things, Henry Aaron was taking it from them them and giving it to and giving it to us us. He was giving us a little something more than what we had, something that we'd never had."
IN THE FOURTH inning, Henry received a long standing ovation for his second at bat. Darrell Evans was already on first; a throwing error by the shortstop Russell put him on. It was the top of the fourth, nobody out, and the Dodgers had already committed three errors. They would commit three more before the evening was over. Downing threw another pitch into the dirt. inning, Henry received a long standing ovation for his second at bat. Darrell Evans was already on first; a throwing error by the shortstop Russell put him on. It was the top of the fourth, nobody out, and the Dodgers had already committed three errors. They would commit three more before the evening was over. Downing threw another pitch into the dirt.
Downing's next pitch would in some ways end his career as much as Henry's swing would end his. Neither man would ever be three-dimensional again. Technology-that is, television-would rob Henry of his speed, his arm, his youth, reducing him forever to a sagging forty-year-old worthy of only one moment, leaving it to his contemporaries and admirers to remind future generations of what a complete, dynamic ballplayer he once was. And Downing would no longer be the proud descendant of the denied Negro Leaguers in general and Bill Yancey, the first black man to ever scout for the Yankees, in particular. The twenty-game season in 1971, being the first black pitcher to start a World Series game for the Yankees-all of it would be deleted in the public mind except for one fastball that hugged too much of the plate, a bad pitch. For the next six years of his life, Al Downing would spiral, referring to this period as "bitter" and his life as "rough" because the mirror would be held up once again to America and the divide between black and white could not be assuaged. One day during the bad years, Downing would be in the bull pen, a father and son ten feet above him in the stands. The father would point at Downing and say, "There's Al Downing.238 He gave up Hank Aaron's seven hundred and fifteenth home run. He's no good." He would hear the father whisper to the son that two black men ("soul brothers" is the phrase Downing recalls hearing) conspired to take away a white man's record. It would not be the first time nor the last that he would be accused of purposely throwing a home-run ball to Hank Aaron. Only after that period would Downing reclaim the full scope of his career and his equilibrium as a man. "Let me get this straight," Downing would say years later. "I got vilified for years for giving up a home run to a man who hit more home runs than anyone who ever lived? Does that make sense to anyone?" He gave up Hank Aaron's seven hundred and fifteenth home run. He's no good." He would hear the father whisper to the son that two black men ("soul brothers" is the phrase Downing recalls hearing) conspired to take away a white man's record. It would not be the first time nor the last that he would be accused of purposely throwing a home-run ball to Hank Aaron. Only after that period would Downing reclaim the full scope of his career and his equilibrium as a man. "Let me get this straight," Downing would say years later. "I got vilified for years for giving up a home run to a man who hit more home runs than anyone who ever lived? Does that make sense to anyone?"
MILO H HAMILTON ("THERE'S A NEW HOME CHAMPION OF ALL TIME, AND IT'S HENRY AARON!") ("THERE'S A NEW HOME CHAMPION OF ALL TIME, AND IT'S HENRY AARON!") received more attention, but it was the legend, Vin Scully, who offered the more poignant, textured, and lasting call of the moment: received more attention, but it was the legend, Vin Scully, who offered the more poignant, textured, and lasting call of the moment: And swinging two bats is Henry Aaron239 ... and once again a standing ovation for Henry Aaron. He means the tying run at the plate now, so we'll see what Downing does. Al at the belt and he delivers and he's low, ball one.... And that just adds to the pressure ... the crowd booing.... Downing has to ignore the sound effects and stay a professional and pitch his game. One ball and no strikes, Aaron waiting ... the outfield deep and straight away ... fastball, high drive into deep left center field ... Buckner goes back ... to the fence ... it is GONE.... ... and once again a standing ovation for Henry Aaron. He means the tying run at the plate now, so we'll see what Downing does. Al at the belt and he delivers and he's low, ball one.... And that just adds to the pressure ... the crowd booing.... Downing has to ignore the sound effects and stay a professional and pitch his game. One ball and no strikes, Aaron waiting ... the outfield deep and straight away ... fastball, high drive into deep left center field ... Buckner goes back ... to the fence ... it is GONE....
For twenty-five seconds, Vin Scully stayed quiet, allowing the fans to speak to America for him as Henry rounded the bases. And then he continued with the words that would make a career: It is over. And for the first time in a long time that poker face of Aaron shows the tremendous relief.... What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron.
The racial divide in America was apparent even during his victorious trip around the bases. Henry rounded first and passed Steve Garvey, who attempted to give Henry a congratulatory slap of hands but missed. In the Dodger dugout, Steve Yeager, the backup catcher, watched the flight of the ball and for the next three and half decades would take little more from the evening than one number surpassing another. "It was a long time ago,"240 he would say. "It was a historic moment, a big moment, but there are a lot of big moments in sports. But, you go on. For him to do that shows what an outstanding hitter he was, one of the best in baseball." For the black players, the home run meant so much more. The second baseman, Davey Lopes, was the first person to shake Henry's hand-the kind of shake third-base coaches give home-run hitters-then wound up with his glove hand and gave Henry a swipe on the rump. What Lopes was witnessing would resonate deeply. He is not African-American, but Cape Verdean. A small island off the westernmost point of Africa, near Senegal, Cape Verde had long been colonized by the Portuguese. In the early twentieth century, Cape Verdeans emigrated to the United States, settling largely in the old fishing and whaling towns of southern New England, places with historic names from another century, like Plymouth, New Bedford, Falmouth, Wareham, and Buzzards Bay. Lopes was raised by a single mother in Providence, Rhode Island, and his experience in America was one of being caught in between the black and the white culture, sometimes at the price of his own natural heritage. "If you told someone you were Cape Verdean, he would say. "It was a historic moment, a big moment, but there are a lot of big moments in sports. But, you go on. For him to do that shows what an outstanding hitter he was, one of the best in baseball." For the black players, the home run meant so much more. The second baseman, Davey Lopes, was the first person to shake Henry's hand-the kind of shake third-base coaches give home-run hitters-then wound up with his glove hand and gave Henry a swipe on the rump. What Lopes was witnessing would resonate deeply. He is not African-American, but Cape Verdean. A small island off the westernmost point of Africa, near Senegal, Cape Verde had long been colonized by the Portuguese. In the early twentieth century, Cape Verdeans emigrated to the United States, settling largely in the old fishing and whaling towns of southern New England, places with historic names from another century, like Plymouth, New Bedford, Falmouth, Wareham, and Buzzards Bay. Lopes was raised by a single mother in Providence, Rhode Island, and his experience in America was one of being caught in between the black and the white culture, sometimes at the price of his own natural heritage. "If you told someone you were Cape Verdean,241 they wouldn't even know where to begin to look," he recalled. New England does not produce many baseball players, and historically the ones talented enough to compete with players from the baseball-rich regions of California and Texas are celebrated as local heroes, inspirations. But Davey Lopes did not receive such attention and knew his darker skin to be the catalyst for his relative anonymity. In a few months after Henry's home run, Lopes and the Dodgers would play the Oakland A's in the World Series and Lopes would tell an interviewer, "I don't even think Providence knows I'm here." Like Al Downing, Lopes was proud of his special heritage as a person of color, more specifically that he was a dark-skinned second baseman wearing the uniform of the Dodgers, standing in the same position as Robinson and, after him, Jim "Junior" Gilliam. "I remember when I first came up. We'd be in spring training and Junior would tell me to come with him. I'd say, 'Where we going?' and he would just tell me to come on. We'd be in St. Petersburg and he'd point out the majestic hotels. He'd say, 'That's where the Dodgers used to stay,' and I was just in awe. Then we'd go farther into a neighborhood and he'd show me some average-looking house and say, 'And that's where they wouldn't even know where to begin to look," he recalled. New England does not produce many baseball players, and historically the ones talented enough to compete with players from the baseball-rich regions of California and Texas are celebrated as local heroes, inspirations. But Davey Lopes did not receive such attention and knew his darker skin to be the catalyst for his relative anonymity. In a few months after Henry's home run, Lopes and the Dodgers would play the Oakland A's in the World Series and Lopes would tell an interviewer, "I don't even think Providence knows I'm here." Like Al Downing, Lopes was proud of his special heritage as a person of color, more specifically that he was a dark-skinned second baseman wearing the uniform of the Dodgers, standing in the same position as Robinson and, after him, Jim "Junior" Gilliam. "I remember when I first came up. We'd be in spring training and Junior would tell me to come with him. I'd say, 'Where we going?' and he would just tell me to come on. We'd be in St. Petersburg and he'd point out the majestic hotels. He'd say, 'That's where the Dodgers used to stay,' and I was just in awe. Then we'd go farther into a neighborhood and he'd show me some average-looking house and say, 'And that's where we we had to stay.' And it blew my mind, because it wasn't long ago. I thought about those things, about where we'd come as people of color, and that's why I shook Henry Aaron's hand. It felt like something I had to do." had to stay.' And it blew my mind, because it wasn't long ago. I thought about those things, about where we'd come as people of color, and that's why I shook Henry Aaron's hand. It felt like something I had to do."
Henry rounded second and, seemingly out of nowhere, two fans appeared and escorted him between the bases. At third, Ron Cey saw the two kids racing toward Henry and thought for a second that this was it: They might attack him.
"Well, I wasn't really sure what I was going to do242 when it happened. But it became clear what I was going to do when he came around, and two kids had run onto the field-I was going to stay clear of it," Cey recalled. "If he'd been running solo, I probably would have shaken his hand, but the other part of it was that this was really his moment, and you know, he should kind of walk alone." when it happened. But it became clear what I was going to do when he came around, and two kids had run onto the field-I was going to stay clear of it," Cey recalled. "If he'd been running solo, I probably would have shaken his hand, but the other part of it was that this was really his moment, and you know, he should kind of walk alone."
Having grown up in socially segregated Tacoma, Washington, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in a sense Cey was vindicated. He had always believed that sport, at its best, could be the great antidote for the American divide.
"I grew up playing sports, so I always had a relationship of playing with black kids throughout all the amateur sports: football, basketball, baseball. You know, it wasn't an issue. We grew up playing each other," Cey recalled. "I think sports, in a way, has a way of breaking down those issues. We're all trying to do something that involves a common bond. We're just making the best of it and trying to win. It [his neighborhood] was pretty segregated back then. There was a part of the town where black kids went to school. But it was a normal, everyday, middle-class place to be. There was a certain boys club downtown that was predominately black that I frequented because of my relationships with some of these players, and we didn't have any issues. This was where sports would bring you together. It's not like we all signed up on the same team to play. Somebody drafted us and we made our way to the big-league club. These were the best players. These were the players who were going to be part of our future, and when you take the field, you're all working for the same thing. If you're on a different page than that, you really shouldn't be there."
In the crowd, the two kids were racing toward Henry, and Calvin Wardlaw stood, flinching, and considered reaching for his pistol, which rested in his binocular case. A few feet away, Davey Lopes didn't even see them. "I always wondered,243 Where the hell did they come from?" he recalled. Where the hell did they come from?" he recalled.
Within milliseconds, it was clear the two fans had come in peace. Henry gently nudged the two kids aside as he headed toward home plate, where the home run would be official and the chase finally over. Both Britt Gaston and Cliff Courtney were students at the University of Georgia. Both would be arrested, the charge on the report alleging the two "ran onto ballfield during ballgame and interrupted ballgame." Henry would lend his name to the list of those who wanted the charges against the two kids dropped. Among those in Henry's inner circle, the running gallows joke for years would be that the smartest decision of the evening was Calvin Wardlaw's electing to leave his gun in his binocular case.
TOM H HOUSE considers himself considers himself244 a "real low-end guy," "happy for every day" he gets to spend in the big leagues. He watched the flight of the ball and Bill Buckner climbing the fence in an attempt to put his pregame calisthenics to use. "My God, he's gonna catch it," House blurted out. The ball was beyond Buckner's reach. House threw a triumphant fist in the air. Jimmy Wynn took his glove off and began to clap. a "real low-end guy," "happy for every day" he gets to spend in the big leagues. He watched the flight of the ball and Bill Buckner climbing the fence in an attempt to put his pregame calisthenics to use. "My God, he's gonna catch it," House blurted out. The ball was beyond Buckner's reach. House threw a triumphant fist in the air. Jimmy Wynn took his glove off and began to clap.
This was the first year House had made a big-league club out of spring training without the immediate fear of being sent down. He was aware of his place in the big-league hierarchy, an environment where batting averages, strikeout totals, and earned-run averages might as well have been printed on everyone's forehead. He had noticed that during the day-to-day activities, Henry stood at a bit of a distance. In House's words, that was "because he's Hank Aaron." He said that he was "thrilled" that Henry even knew he was alive. "He was unfailingly kind. I didn't really understand the social IQ and the things he was going through, but you would never have known," House recalled. "He called me 'Tommy' and he was the same all the time-same way, same demeanor. A whole lot people were pulling for him and pulling against him, but you would never have known. I remember thinking that this guy was probably the most underrated superstar in the world. He was unbelievably civil, from the clubhouse kids to my tier of athlete all the way to the top. He was a pleasure to be around."
House had had visions not dissimilar to those of Joe Shirley, the Braves security man. "I had visions of a little old lady getting stomped by a Georgia Tech football player." But the most important baseball in the world was speeding toward him. His friend and bull-pen mate, Buzz Capra, was boxing him out to negotiate a better angle and wound up pushing House closer to the ball. House recalled what he realized at that moment: "If I don't catch it, the stitches will hit me right in the forehead."
House caught the ball and sprinted toward the infield, where Henry was being mobbed at home plate. Stella had him in a mother's embrace, a physical expression of exhalation. "He's hugging his mom and he's got a crocodile tear, and I'm thinking, Holy crap. Hank Aaron has a tear in his eye and he's hugging his mom. It's a Life Saver moment. The fact that Hank Aaron had tears in his eyes shook me more than anything," House recalled. "Then I find out a few days later from Dusty that she held him so tight to prevent anyone from shooting him. Here were a mom and a son sharing the ultimate moment in baseball, a Little League family moment in a way that nobody else would understand. But what sticks in my mind was that the tear was that he might have been happy that it was over, and the rest of the world would have killed to be in his shoes."
THE MIRROR WAS held up to America and there were the white men who did not flinch at the discomforts of the divide. They were the ones whom, back in the 1920s and 1930s, Ed Scott used to call "the good ones": whites who saw America's racial odyssey in all of its complexities and hypocrisies, and who understood its true cost and how much all of the people who called themselves Americans, and not just the blacks, had been diminished. Mike Marshall was one of those men. "He showed that it could happen. held up to America and there were the white men who did not flinch at the discomforts of the divide. They were the ones whom, back in the 1920s and 1930s, Ed Scott used to call "the good ones": whites who saw America's racial odyssey in all of its complexities and hypocrisies, and who understood its true cost and how much all of the people who called themselves Americans, and not just the blacks, had been diminished. Mike Marshall was one of those men. "He showed that it could happen.245 He showed all the nonsense about black people not being smart enough to be quarterbacks or as good as Babe Ruth," Marshall said. "Talent comes in all hues. That's what he did." Marshall was sitting in the dugout when Henry's ball jetted over the infield to its final destination. He showed all the nonsense about black people not being smart enough to be quarterbacks or as good as Babe Ruth," Marshall said. "Talent comes in all hues. That's what he did." Marshall was sitting in the dugout when Henry's ball jetted over the infield to its final destination.
"I grew up in a small town in Michigan, a farm town. It was long before the big numbers of Latinos moved in. Our farm wasn't big enough, so we didn't have crops that needed to be picked. I played in Selma and Chattanooga and Montgomery. I remember the different bathrooms and drinking fountains and places where you could sit and where you couldn't, and I remember thinking we're all the same people. How can these people be so far behind?" When Marshall suffered through difficulties in baseball, his friendship with Ronnie Woods, an outfielder Marshall met when the two were with Detroit in the mid-1960s, sustained him. The two became teammates in the big leagues in Montreal in 1972.
"Back then, even in the early 1970s, there wasn't a lot of interracial rooming. I think I was the first guy on the Expos with a black roommate, but I didn't care. His friendship made playing baseball a lot easier."
The game was stopped for eleven minutes, and Henry was too weary to be eloquent. Honesty without flourish was all he could offer. There was no joy contained in his drained face, no desire to bask in his own afterglow. His words were not reflective or introspective or prescient, nor, upon reflecting upon this evening, would they ever be. "I just thank God," Henry said, "that it's all over with." For the next thirty-five years, Henry Aaron would not waver from this position. In San Diego, Cito Gaston heard Henry had broken the record and felt tears well up. "I was just proud.246 That was all I felt-pride. And years later, when I had read about how much the record hurt and how a lot of that hurt never went away, I just thought to myself, What would life be like without so much discrimination?" That was all I felt-pride. And years later, when I had read about how much the record hurt and how a lot of that hurt never went away, I just thought to myself, What would life be like without so much discrimination?"
THE GAME RESUMED, and Dusty Baker was amazed at how quickly the sellout crowd disappeared. "There were about fifty-five thousand people247 there for the record, and about ten thousand people left after it was over," Baker recalled. there for the record, and about ten thousand people left after it was over," Baker recalled.
In center field, Jimmy Wynn had an uncontrollable urge to speak to Henry. Players on opposing teams were discouraged from fraternizing back then, but this moment was bigger than silly rules.
"My thing was, It's over with.248 Now Hank can lead a comfortable life," Wynn recalled. "I kind of paused, and then told myself, The hell with it. I'm going to shake his hand. I'm going to treat this man with respect. I shook his hand and I was glad I did. You could see what the whole thing did to him. He could have said, 'I did it. I am the number-one home-run hitter of all time,' and should have been happy about it and should have enjoyed it. But you know what? He never did." Now Hank can lead a comfortable life," Wynn recalled. "I kind of paused, and then told myself, The hell with it. I'm going to shake his hand. I'm going to treat this man with respect. I shook his hand and I was glad I did. You could see what the whole thing did to him. He could have said, 'I did it. I am the number-one home-run hitter of all time,' and should have been happy about it and should have enjoyed it. But you know what? He never did."
The Braves closed the clubhouse for an hour after the game and celebrated the moment as a team. There were plans for celebrations throughout the baseball world whenever Hank Aaron came to town, for the first time as the all-time leader in home runs. When the doors to the Braves clubhouse opened, Henry shook a few hands and offered a few words to the writers, the most telling to Wayne Minshew. "All he said was,249 'I'm going home now,'" Minshew said. "That was it. 'I'm going home.'" 'I'm going home now,'" Minshew said. "That was it. 'I'm going home.'"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
MORTAL.
ON A APRIL 8, the record-breaking home run had been Henry's only hit in three at bats. In his first three games of the season, he'd hit two home runs, and then came the swings and the misses, and, following them, the embarrassed looks, the pity, and the doubts. The night after Henry broke the record, a kid named Tommy John collared him zero for four. So did Andy Messersmith, Clay Kirby, and Randy Jones, the future winner of the Cy Young Award, who at that time couldn't get anyone out. Jones would lose twenty-two games for San Diego in 1974. Over the first sixteen at bats after hitting 715, Henry produced exactly one hit, home run number 716, off the Dodger knuckleballer Charlie Hough. His batting average was .179. 8, the record-breaking home run had been Henry's only hit in three at bats. In his first three games of the season, he'd hit two home runs, and then came the swings and the misses, and, following them, the embarrassed looks, the pity, and the doubts. The night after Henry broke the record, a kid named Tommy John collared him zero for four. So did Andy Messersmith, Clay Kirby, and Randy Jones, the future winner of the Cy Young Award, who at that time couldn't get anyone out. Jones would lose twenty-two games for San Diego in 1974. Over the first sixteen at bats after hitting 715, Henry produced exactly one hit, home run number 716, off the Dodger knuckleballer Charlie Hough. His batting average was .179.
With each weak swing against a weaker opponent, Garr and Baker looked at Henry, and you could see the hurt in their eyes. Nobody wanted to suggest that Supe, of all people, could no longer get around on a fastball. It was one thing to accept on an intellectual level that eventually baseball would get all of them, that even the immortals would inevitably sag and succumb as the calendar flipped forward. But it was quite another to see the Hammer getting beaten inside by a ham-and-egg fastball, needing a two-hit game, as he did April 21 in Houston, to get his average over .200. As the sun set, Henry fell deeper into himself. He was in the lineup less, playing left field now (Garr was the everyday right fielder), producing a running commentary of rejuvenation and avoidance, of willpower and resignation. "The problem is,250 when you've pounded baseballs for twenty years, it takes a lot of convincing to make you believe you can't do it anymore," Henry would reflect years later in his autobiography, when you've pounded baseballs for twenty years, it takes a lot of convincing to make you believe you can't do it anymore," Henry would reflect years later in his autobiography, I Had a Hammer I Had a Hammer. "I didn't believe it yet."
Henry did his best not to let on that he was spending more of his time in the company of doubt. "You have to understand that we looked up to him251 so much," Garr said. "Sure, there were pitches that he wasn't getting anymore. He was definitely missing a few, but that was what made him great to me. If you came around looking for someone to cry, you came looking for the wrong man." so much," Garr said. "Sure, there were pitches that he wasn't getting anymore. He was definitely missing a few, but that was what made him great to me. If you came around looking for someone to cry, you came looking for the wrong man."
THE RECORD NOW broken, the easier it became for the Atlanta front office to reach the inevitable, hard assessment that Henry Aaron could no longer play. The record belonged to him and his name could never again be mentioned without the accompanying appositive, Hank Aaron, Home Run King, but Henry was also something far less regal: a forty-year-old outfielder making $200,000 a year, a player who was a full nine years older than Davey Johnson, the next-oldest position regular on the club. He was a player for whom-at least while wearing a baseball uniform-the past held far more glory than the future. The physical traits, certainly, were still apparent and they still gave Aaron watchers a nostalgic tingle: Henry resting on one knee in the on-deck circle, sometimes holding two bats to limber up, walking slowly to the plate, batting helmet in his right hand, Del Crandallmodel bat dragging along behind him, leaving a caterpillar's trail. He still stepped into the batter's box as he always had, adjusting his helmet and scooping up a cupful of dirt (even in 1974, when the modern kids wore wristbands and sometimes broken, the easier it became for the Atlanta front office to reach the inevitable, hard assessment that Henry Aaron could no longer play. The record belonged to him and his name could never again be mentioned without the accompanying appositive, Hank Aaron, Home Run King, but Henry was also something far less regal: a forty-year-old outfielder making $200,000 a year, a player who was a full nine years older than Davey Johnson, the next-oldest position regular on the club. He was a player for whom-at least while wearing a baseball uniform-the past held far more glory than the future. The physical traits, certainly, were still apparent and they still gave Aaron watchers a nostalgic tingle: Henry resting on one knee in the on-deck circle, sometimes holding two bats to limber up, walking slowly to the plate, batting helmet in his right hand, Del Crandallmodel bat dragging along behind him, leaving a caterpillar's trail. He still stepped into the batter's box as he always had, adjusting his helmet and scooping up a cupful of dirt (even in 1974, when the modern kids wore wristbands and sometimes two two gloves, Henry did not wear even a single batting glove), as always his hitting prefaced by that deep, majestic clearing of the throat, an operatic harbinger. The routines were familiar and, in many ways, even more poignant as they yellowed. gloves, Henry did not wear even a single batting glove), as always his hitting prefaced by that deep, majestic clearing of the throat, an operatic harbinger. The routines were familiar and, in many ways, even more poignant as they yellowed.
It was his consistency that had always left his contemporaries in so much awe, how he could always hit, regardless of the circumstances, and his ability to dial it up against the best fastballs, adjust to the sharpest curves. That was what was missing right now. "With Henry Aaron, it didn't matter,"252 Ralph Garr reflected. "He could have just come back from a funeral and you wouldn't know. You never knew what was weighing on his mind, what his mood was. You wouldn't know, because his approach was always the same to hitting. Nobody ever had that kind of concentration. If he had problems at home, you'd never know. You couldn't do anything to break him of his plan." Garr used to watch Henry's computerized mind dissect a pitcher's patterns while he sat in the dugout waiting his turn. He could be in the tunnel smoking a butt and yet he knew that he could apply the snippet of information he'd gleaned when it came his time to hit. The macho guys trying to establish themselves, guys like Kirby and Billingham, might start him out with a fastball away, a curveball in, then try to finish him with the one pitch Henry would never completely master, the slider away. Starting Henry off the plate meant that a pitcher believed he had his good stuff and could come in hard with a fastball, but only when absolutely necessary. When a pitcher started him off with a fastball in, well, that was just a show-me pitch, because unless your last named happened to be Gibson or Koufax, you didn't dare try to come inside twice on Henry in the same at bat. Gibson never gave you a chance to guess whether or not he had it on a given day, so Henry knew never to look for anything but hard and inside, and then adjust. Approaching Gibson any other way was just asking for it, for the last thing Bob Gibson would do was show weakness to a hitter, even if it meant throwing a substandard (by Gibson's measure) fastball in a dangerous location to a dangerous hitter. Against the rest of the league, Henry had the pitching sequences against him so perfectly memorized that Garr would sit back with delight and watch the guy on the mound take his inevitable pounding at the hands of the master. Ralph Garr reflected. "He could have just come back from a funeral and you wouldn't know. You never knew what was weighing on his mind, what his mood was. You wouldn't know, because his approach was always the same to hitting. Nobody ever had that kind of concentration. If he had problems at home, you'd never know. You couldn't do anything to break him of his plan." Garr used to watch Henry's computerized mind dissect a pitcher's patterns while he sat in the dugout waiting his turn. He could be in the tunnel smoking a butt and yet he knew that he could apply the snippet of information he'd gleaned when it came his time to hit. The macho guys trying to establish themselves, guys like Kirby and Billingham, might start him out with a fastball away, a curveball in, then try to finish him with the one pitch Henry would never completely master, the slider away. Starting Henry off the plate meant that a pitcher believed he had his good stuff and could come in hard with a fastball, but only when absolutely necessary. When a pitcher started him off with a fastball in, well, that was just a show-me pitch, because unless your last named happened to be Gibson or Koufax, you didn't dare try to come inside twice on Henry in the same at bat. Gibson never gave you a chance to guess whether or not he had it on a given day, so Henry knew never to look for anything but hard and inside, and then adjust. Approaching Gibson any other way was just asking for it, for the last thing Bob Gibson would do was show weakness to a hitter, even if it meant throwing a substandard (by Gibson's measure) fastball in a dangerous location to a dangerous hitter. Against the rest of the league, Henry had the pitching sequences against him so perfectly memorized that Garr would sit back with delight and watch the guy on the mound take his inevitable pounding at the hands of the master.
The difference now was that Henry possessed the knowledge but was not producing the results, and day after day, the great man lunged where he once strode. The swagger remained intact, but now it was accompanied by fewer hits. The vaunted wrists were still plenty quick enough-until the day he walked off the field for good, nobody would easily strike out Henry Aaron-but instead of providing the gunpowder, the wrists now provided only protection, keeping him from striking out. There were times when the kids, with their hormones and muscles, would fire a fastball past Henry early in the game, thinking time had gotten the better of him. And then there he'd be, watching the fastball, sensing its movement, just as always, as some young catcher sat back, self-satisfied, waiting to watch the ball zip past the old man once more in a rush of hot air ... only then, the wrists would spark to life, and the old baseball men, the scouts, with their Cadillacs and suspenders and their round bellies, their pens and pads and charts (in a few years, they'd be carrying radar guns, too), sitting behind the backstop would give one another that wry, wrinkly nod. That's Henry for you. He's still got it That's Henry for you. He's still got it. And they would dig deep into their endless bags of folklore and chuckle. You got to get up early in the morning to sneak a fastball by ole Henry Aaron... You got to get up early in the morning to sneak a fastball by ole Henry Aaron.... And it was right there, at that hundredth of a second in time-that unit of measure for the millionth percentiles that differentiated Mount Olympus from Cooperstown-when the universe, once so predictable, flew completely off of its axis. Once, there had been that automatic thunderclap. Now, when Henry swung, the baseball would just slide weakly off of the barrel of his bat and ricochet backward into the netting, and Henry would turn and watch the ball sail foul, poker-faced, trying to ignore the doubt. The next night, he might be beautiful again, slashing through the zone, doubles one-hopping deadly off the base of the outfield wall. And on the very next night, an average fastball might catch the bottom of his bat and trickle harmlessly toward the third-base dugout, coughing up chalk as it spun along, giving life to more whispers. And his guts would churn, because he knew better than anybody that those were the pitches that through two wars and five presidents had routinely gotten tattooed. The wrists were no longer sparking fires, no longer doing the executioner's work. Once they'd been torpedoes, but now the legendary wrists of the great Henry Aaron were just life preservers, prolonging hopeless at bats for one more pitch.
HE WAS STILL Henry Aaron. That was why Eddie Mathews batted him fourth the whole season, the same spot he had hit since the Korean War. Whatever changes Mathews might have made to the lineup, he didn't mess with one spot: When Henry played, he batted cleanup, which, whatever evidence to the contrary, made life feel normal. He fought time, even as he increasingly lost the battle. Every now and again, the old Henry would rise. Henry Aaron. That was why Eddie Mathews batted him fourth the whole season, the same spot he had hit since the Korean War. Whatever changes Mathews might have made to the lineup, he didn't mess with one spot: When Henry played, he batted cleanup, which, whatever evidence to the contrary, made life feel normal. He fought time, even as he increasingly lost the battle. Every now and again, the old Henry would rise.
"When we would fly from Atlanta overnight to California, he normally wouldn't play the next day. We did a cross-country trip to San Francisco one time and when we got there there was a newspaper article in the San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Chronicle about this 'Count' Montefusco, a young pitcher, maybe twenty-two years old," recalled Davey Johnson, then a Braves infielder. "He had great stuff, a nasty slider-an unhittable slider. He was complaining that he was having to pitch against the Braves. He said something like 'They're not a good team; why am I pitching against them?' And Henry read the paper and he went to [Clyde King] and said, 'I'm in the lineup.' And it was a day game after an all-night flight. I'll never forget it. We all knew what was going to happen. We'd seen it too many times. A couple of guys got on base in front of him and Henry looked for his best pitch, which was a nasty down-and-away slider. He reached out there and popped it over the left center-field wall. He came back into the dugout and said, 'I hope that kid gained more respect for us now.' Henry put him in his place. This kid was cocky. He had a really great year and felt above pitching against any club. That's what Henry said, 'We can't let this go.' And I mean to tell you, it was a wicked low-and-away slider. That was in 1974, Montefusco's first year." about this 'Count' Montefusco, a young pitcher, maybe twenty-two years old," recalled Davey Johnson, then a Braves infielder. "He had great stuff, a nasty slider-an unhittable slider. He was complaining that he was having to pitch against the Braves. He said something like 'They're not a good team; why am I pitching against them?' And Henry read the paper and he went to [Clyde King] and said, 'I'm in the lineup.' And it was a day game after an all-night flight. I'll never forget it. We all knew what was going to happen. We'd seen it too many times. A couple of guys got on base in front of him and Henry looked for his best pitch, which was a nasty down-and-away slider. He reached out there and popped it over the left center-field wall. He came back into the dugout and said, 'I hope that kid gained more respect for us now.' Henry put him in his place. This kid was cocky. He had a really great year and felt above pitching against any club. That's what Henry said, 'We can't let this go.' And I mean to tell you, it was a wicked low-and-away slider. That was in 1974, Montefusco's first year."
Johnson could be forgiven for flashbulb memory, but the kernel of the story is nevertheless true. The game was September 18, 1974, the finale of a three-game set in San Francisco. It was true that Henry did not usually play in the opener of a West Coast series following a cross-country flight, nor did he play in this case: a day-game travel day following a night game. John Montefusco woke him, and Henry had been scheduled an off-day but put himself in the lineup. Montfusco was a rising star, twenty-four years old. He had been called up fifteen days earlier and the next year would win Rookie of the Year in the National League.
Henry led off the second, and boomed home run number 732 off Montefusco, a long, slashing drive to left center. In his next at-bat, with two on in the third, Henry singled home another run off Montefusco. Henry had put the kid down, but what didn't make sense was why Montefusco would want to upset any opponent, as the Giants would finish sixteen games behind the Braves in 1974. Pressure was like the wind, unseen by the human eye, but it could easily and obviously be detected when it descended, exerting its suffocating, downward force. The pressure Henry felt stemmed not only from his inability to catch a fastball but from why he couldn't why he couldn't. The truth was that he had indeed started the marathoner's kick to get to Ruth, gave it everything he had and soared at an age when so many of his contemporaries were washed up. Between the ages of thirty-five and thirty-nine, Mays had wilted as a baseball player. So had Frank Robinson and the rest of them. But Henry had hit 199 home runs, so suddenly, at age forty, it did not compute that the skill was no longer there. Even when he was hitting under .200, his strikeout totals were still low, and that was all the more reason for him to believe that he suffered from mechanical flaws more than from physical erosion.
In the years to come, with reflection, Henry understood the reasons were not mostly physical (other than that the nagging aches persisted a bit longer), but mental: There was, after Ruth, nothing left to chase. For five years, Ruth had been the obsession, and for the ten before that, the goal had been to prove he belonged with Mays, Mantle, and Musial, on the red carpet with the all-time greats, the ones who defined Cooperstown, instead of the other way around, and during his initial five years in the big leagues, the motivating force had been proving to himself that there was a bigger, more rewarding life beyond Mobile in which he was entitled to share. He would say he always believed he would quit the game after he had achieved three thousand hits, but the proximity to Ruth kept him going, five years after that milestone. He had wanted desperately for the chase to be over, to put an end to the pressures and the anxieties and the fears. Billye and his closest friends would spend the next three decades trying to repair the blows to his humanity that had been exacted during the chase. "There is no question he lost something253 he could never get back, a piece of himself," said his close friend and attorney, Allan Tanenbaum. "The chase did that." he could never get back, a piece of himself," said his close friend and attorney, Allan Tanenbaum. "The chase did that."
But now that the record belonged to him, Henry realized how much the goal of vanquishing Ruth had gotten inside of him. He had weakened as a complete player since 1968, harassed by his back, his ankles, all the parts of his body that hurt. He had stolen at least fifteen bases a year for nine straight seasons, but since turning thirty-five in 1969, he hadn't stolen ten in a single season, and would not again. He did not know what would provide the inner motivation to continue playing ball.
For a time, it appeared that the pennant race would energize him. In the month before the all-star break, the Braves contended with the Reds and Dodgers, both hungry, muscular clubs. June 21, opening game of the series at Riverfront Stadium, Carl Morton against Jack Billingham: The two traded zeroes until the seventh, when Henry stroked a one-out double and later scored on a ground ball. The rest was tension, the Big Red Machine loading the bases in the bottom of the ninth, Tom House facing the murderous Johnny Bench for the game. Bench flied out to left, and the Braves took a 10 win. They were in second place, only five games behind Los Angeles and two ahead of Cincinnati. The Braves were making a pennant run, and it was Henry who had scored the only run of the game. Intermittently in 1974, he had spoken of retirement, but maybe there was some fun to be had after all, one last charge. Phil Niekro, the other old head on the club (even Niekro, who looked like he was seventy even when he was in his thirties, was five years younger than Henry), led the pitching staff. The kid Buzz Capra was surprising the league at 72, and that self-described "low-end guy, happy to be there" Tom House possessed a microscopic ERA. Where there was pitching, there was October, so even though he was no longer as dangerous, Henry somehow still found himself in the middle of big wins as the summer progressed.
A month later, the day before the all-star break, Dock Ellis beat the Braves 62 at AtlantaFulton County Stadium, and the only thing October signified to any of the long faces on the bench was uninterrupted fishing trips. The Braves had lost twenty-two of their previous thirty-three games, their record plummeted to a mediocre 5049-a hearty fifteen games out of first-and the smiles disappeared. The loss also spelled curtains for Eddie Mathews, who, following the final out of Ellis's complete game five-hitter, was fired before he could leave the building.
Out of the race, Henry would then have to generate his own fuel, and that was precisely the problem. The ghost of Ruth had been vanquished, and even his personal life had grown normal once again. He and Billye began to sow philanthropic seeds in Atlanta, forming charitable foundations and working with others. Gaile returned to school, largely without incident, and during the early afternoons before night games it was a common occurrence to see Henry, in turtleneck and plaid pants, leaning on the fence at Marist High School, watching Henry Aaron, Jr., play linebacker on the school football team.
Henry had even outlasted most, if not all, of his contemporaries. Mays had gone, quietly, the last hit of his career driving in the go-ahead run in the twelfth inning of the second game of the 1973 World Series against Oakland, partial redemption for the moment that would become the universal, chilling reminder for gods who can't quit: falling down in the outfield while chasing Deron Johnson's liner in the bottom of the ninth. Ernie Banks had retired in 1971. Mantle and Drysdale had been gone six years, Koufax nearly ten. Robinson and Clemente were dead, and Frank Robinson was at the end-it was heavily rumored that he would become the first black manager in the game at season's end. Even the roaring lion Gibson had already announced that 1975 would be his final year. The old foes were gone, and spiraling out of the race had cost his old comrade Eddie Mathews his job. Henry had already achieved every important milestone in the sport, had, in the words of Dusty Baker, broken a record every time he climbed out of bed, and had caught every standard-bearer against whom he had once measured himself. Stan Musial's National League record of 3,630 hits was within striking distance, but once Ruth's record was already under glass, rapping out singles to pass Musial lacked the requisite emotional punch. There was nothing else for Henry to do in the game.
THE SIGNS WERE everywhere, and had been since the beginning of spring, when he announced that 1974 would be his final year, that the end of Henry's career possessed the potential for trouble between him and the Braves, the kind of trouble that could sour a legacy. One such warning signal was that Henry was hitting less often but challenging the baseball establishment more. He was the home-run king and, he later said, believed he had accrued the appropriate political capital to press for rights. But there was the delicate matter of just how the Braves felt about him as a player. His contract was up at the end of 1974 and the Braves had not initiated any discussions about renewing it. Part of the reason for this was that Henry had said during spring training he believed he would retire after the 1974 season. There were words of surprise and encouragement when Henry mentioned quitting, but no one in the Braves management really pulled on his emotional coattails to coax him to stay, and they certainly did not offer him a contract for 1975. He had become that Gibraltar of professional sports-the aging superstar too big, too accomplished, and too familiar and popular with the fans to be casually cast aside simply because his skills had eroded. History had shown that these endings were rarely resolved well. Ruth left the Yankees with an unrequited longing to manage and a sagging belly. Robinson left the Dodgers with bitterness that so heroic a journey could culminate in such cynicism, while Mays left the Giants ragged and hollow. By voluntarily retiring, Henry was following the Ted Williams model, walking away unlined, indomitable. No one in management wanted to say it, but, by retiring, Henry was solving a potentially messy problem for the Braves. everywhere, and had been since the beginning of spring, when he announced that 1974 would be his final year, that the end of Henry's career possessed the potential for trouble between him and the Braves, the kind of trouble that could sour a legacy. One such warning signal was that Henry was hitting less often but challenging the baseball establishment more. He was the home-run king and, he later said, believed he had accrued the appropriate political capital to press for rights. But there was the delicate matter of just how the Braves felt about him as a player. His contract was up at the end of 1974 and the Braves had not initiated any discussions about renewing it. Part of the reason for this was that Henry had said during spring training he believed he would retire after the 1974 season. There were words of surprise and encouragement when Henry mentioned quitting, but no one in the Braves management really pulled on his emotional coattails to coax him to stay, and they certainly did not offer him a contract for 1975. He had become that Gibraltar of professional sports-the aging superstar too big, too accomplished, and too familiar and popular with the fans to be casually cast aside simply because his skills had eroded. History had shown that these endings were rarely resolved well. Ruth left the Yankees with an unrequited longing to manage and a sagging belly. Robinson left the Dodgers with bitterness that so heroic a journey could culminate in such cynicism, while Mays left the Giants ragged and hollow. By voluntarily retiring, Henry was following the Ted Williams model, walking away unlined, indomitable. No one in management wanted to say it, but, by retiring, Henry was solving a potentially messy problem for the Braves.
Into the season, he slogged his way through the .200s and took more days off (day games following night games, mostly and Sunday get-aways to let his body regenerate) as the club began drifting toward the future, a future that for the first time since he became the Rookie Rocket did not include him. When any chance of winning the pennant was beaten out of them during that heinous July, the end of the Aaron era became merely a matter of ripping days off of the summer calendar.
It was precisely during this time that Henry began to change his mind about the future. He had always said he would not be the ballplayer who quit only after he looked ridiculous on the field, but neither could he quite stand the idea of walking away in the grips of his mortality. Maybe he did not want to quit after all, not with a .225 batting threatening to be his final memory of wearing a big-league uniform. Maybe he would shake the tempting hand of Faust and enter into the same fatal deal that had finished other athletes, from ballplayers to boxers: He would tell himself that he would be the one who could deny time. He would say nothing, but his mind was changing about playing in 1975; he was giving himself one more chance to leave the game on top.
If the Braves were willing to reassess and allow Henry to return to the team in 1975 (and there was no evidence that they were), the series of simmering events at the end of the July appeared to end his relationship with the organization. Soon after Mathews was fired, Frank Hyland of the Journal Journal asked Henry if he was interesting in managing the club. Henry retreated. "No, no, no," he replied. "I'm not interested in managing this club, or any other." Hyland went with the story and the rest of the press followed. asked Henry if he was interesting in managing the club. Henry retreated. "No, no, no," he replied. "I'm not interested in managing this club, or any other." Hyland went with the story and the rest of the press followed.
IT WON'T BE HANK254The job of replacing deposed Eddie Mathews as manager of the Braves is still up for grabs.... People are asking "could it be Tommie Aaron, Hank's brother who manages the Savannah farm club?"It won't be Hank Aaron. Hank didn't say "no" to the suggestion. He said, "No, no, no, no, no. It won't be me. I don't know who it will be."
Then Eddie Robinson, the Braves general manager, said Henry was not a candidate for the job, and neither was Tommie, and that was when Henry began to boil. When Hyland and Wayne Minshew asked Robinson if he believed Atlanta was ready for a black manager, Robinson demurred with a terse "I'm not prepared to answer that. No comment." Two days later, Henry Aaron, batting .235, with ten home runs, flew to Pittsburgh for the All-Star Game, his twentieth consecutive one. He was voted in as a starter and shook hands with his teammates, but the game on the field was only part of the story. Baseball, commissioner Bowie Kuhn in particular, was under fire from the Pittsburgh chapter of the NAACP and the Catholic Interracial Council. The two organizations had joined forces to criticize baseball's failure to hire a black manager, with three days of protest leading up to the game. As the new home-run king, Henry smiled as a goodwill ambassador, but he was furious that neither he nor his brother had been taken seriously by Robinson as managerial material. While the NAACP protested in Pittsburgh, Robinson was making his own deal in Atlanta: Clyde King, a baseball lifer, had the job.
When the game commenced, Henry took two uninspired at bats against his old nemesis Gaylord Perry-a weak pop to left and a grounder to first-before being replaced by Cesar Cedeno. Some of the old faces remained-Frank Robinson, Pete Rose, and Joe Morgan-but Robinson remained the only other player in the game who, like Henry, had begun his career in the 1950s. The changes were obvious, from the soft cuts he took in the game to the new generations of stars on both sides-Rollie Fingers, Mike Schmidt, Bobby Grich-suggesting that maybe it might be time to let someone else put on the spikes.
"It's an honor," he later told Dusty Baker privately. "But I don't belong here anymore."
Almost immediately after despairing, Henry tried once more to pull himself up off the mat, giving in to will.
"The way I saw it,255 I had three options: hang on past my prime, do some hitting, or retire," he recalled in I had three options: hang on past my prime, do some hitting, or retire," he recalled in I Had a Hammer I Had a Hammer. "The option I preferred was number two."
When the game ended, Henry Aaron, white-hot, gave a nationally televised interview to Tony Kubek of NBC, where his frustration welled up into a supernova.
"I think they owe me the courtesy of asking me,"256 Henry told Kubek, speaking of the managerial job. "I believe I deserved to be asked if I wanted it," he said. "And if they offered it to me, I would have taken it because there are no black managers." Henry told Kubek, speaking of the managerial job. "I believe I deserved to be asked if I wanted it," he said. "And if they offered it to me, I would have taken it because there are no black managers."
The next day, above the news of Greece and Cypress and the Nixon impeachment and school desegregation stood Henry, above the fold, page 1A of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
RHUBARB!257Aaron Reverses Field ...
But Braves Name King to ManagePITTSBURGH-Clyde King ... will be named manager of the Atlanta Braves ... but Henry Aaron said he would have taken the job if asked...."I still prefer not to manage," Aaron replied, "but it is time he had a black manager in the major leagues." ..."I think Robinson should have at least had the courtesy to ask me if I was interested."
Over the next three days, Henry boiled, at the present and the past, at all that had been said and quite likely all that he had not said over the years. On Thursday, July 25, Jesse Outlar further steamed Henry with his insinuation in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Henry was nothing more than a puppet for black leaders. that Henry was nothing more than a puppet for black leaders.
PRESSURE FROM INFLUENTIAL BLACKS.
LIES BEHIND AARON'S ABOUT-FACEHenry Aaron obviously has agreed to become the Jackie Robinson of the major league dugout. He is taking the lead to change the times in baseball, even if he has to manage, something he has always vowed he did not want to do....Robinson broke the color line in baseball in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now influential black leaders such as Jesse Jackson apparently have persuaded Aaron that he is the man to end the managerial boycott. That's the only logical explanation of Aaron's sudden about face....
The next day came the ground war-an omitted word in Jesse Outlar's column headline transformed AARON SAYS HE HAS NOT CHANGED, BUT HE'S STILL OWN MAN AARON SAYS HE HAS NOT CHANGED, BUT HE'S STILL OWN MAN to to AARON SAYS HE HAS CHANGED, BUT HE'S STILL OWN MAN- AARON SAYS HE HAS CHANGED, BUT HE'S STILL OWN MAN-followed by the atom bomb: a photo accompanying Outlar's column of a cheering Billye, with the caption "Wife Billye: Trouble?" Trouble?"
That did it. He could take being called Stepin Fetchit by Furman Bisher, and a pawn by Jesse Outlar, and being left out in the cold by management, which lauded his contributions to the organization but did not seem to think enough of him to ask him if he was even interested in managing the club before announcing to the world he wasn't being considered, but putting Billye on the front page of the sports section was just the low blow required to set Henry Aaron aflame. It was also the second time Henry had seen Billye become the target. The first was months earlier, on opening day in Cincinnati, when the Reds refused his request to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., with a moment of silence. The whispers had started then, that it was Billye who was planting ideas in Henry's uncomplicated brain, that Henry had been just the nicest fellow until he married her. Now her picture was in the newspaper, adjacent to a story about him with an erroneous headline.
The cutline infuriated Henry, but it only represented a flash point. He had already been seeing red for a week. The Outlar story contained a damaging piece of fiction, one that had been voiced before and that Henry could never live down. The article suggested he did not possess the intelligence to comprehend the scope of his own struggle, whether it be the civil rights movement or the necessity for the next level of integration in his own sport, and that he needed his wife to put ideas in his head.
It all came to a head later that night, Farmer's Night at Atlanta Stadium, a quaint tradition since the Braves had first arrived in Atlanta. Each player received a carton of produce and the local farmers were celebrated in a pregame ceremony. The game with the Padres was being delayed, and while the tarp still covered the infield, Garr and Baker both told Frank Hyland to steer clear of Henry, which piqued the reporter's curiosity. Henry wanted a piece of Hyland, too, for Hyland had written that Henry had "double-talked," either to the Braves about not wanting to manage or in the NBC interview about his newfound interest. Either way, Hyland wrote, the organization could not be blamed for Henry's indecision. Henry saw Hyland and motioned for him to come to his locker. Ron Reed, the six-foot-six former basketball player, and Henry's pal Paul Casanova stood, Dusty Baker recalled, "like bouncers about to break up a bar fight."258 For a moment, it appeared the two were speaking civilly, and then Henry, for the first time in his career, lost it, letting Frank Hyland have it: a carton of strawberries to the face. For a moment, it appeared the two were speaking civilly, and then Henry, for the first time in his career, lost it, letting Frank Hyland have it: a carton of strawberries to the face.
SPLAT!259 IRATE AARON SMACKS IRATE AARON SMACKS.
WRITER WITH STRAWBERRIES"Henry was pretty hot ... he told me he had never double-talked anyone.... I reminded him that he had told writers one thing before the game about wanting the Braves' managing job and had said something else on television the same night."All of a sudden he shot out with those strawberries he was holding in his hand.... I don't know whether he hit me right or left-handed-but it was flush in the face."
THE TWO WORDS the writers used almost interchangeably when describing the opposite poles of Henry's personality were the writers used almost interchangeably when describing the opposite poles of Henry's personality were dignity dignity and and bitter bitter, the former during times when he seemed to exude uncommon patience with the world's nuisances and injustices (which was another way of saying that Henry often let go unpunished transgressions that a more temperamental person would not have tolerated), the latter when his moods and reactions to seemingly benign situations (or worse, incidents largely of his own making) appeared to the writers incomprehensible. In later years, Henry would admit that he was not an easy man to understand, and throughout his public life he would often find himself reluctant to enter public discourse, expecting little clarity or understanding from the press, believing that any extended attempt to explain his positions would only make matters worse. The result would be a deepening gulf between the writers and Henry, each growing more suspicious of the other. In Henry's view, the writers never understood him, did not take the time to understand him, and thus he did not trust them. To the reporters who covered him, Henry was oversensitive to slights and unaware of the power of his own words until they produced headlines. As far as they were concerned, Henry wanted to have it both ways, to be provocative but not to be criticized when his comments provoked.
If a modern term could be used to describe Henry during this period of his life, passive-aggressive passive-aggressive would seem the most appropriate. He enjoyed his fame, if not the constant attention, then the recognition of his position as one of the all-time great players. He accepted the spoils of his achievements as well earned, never falling into the category of athletes who called attention to themselves either by audaciousness on the field or obnoxiousness in front of the press, and he followed in the Robinson tradition of taking a public stance when he believed progress for blacks was being stalled. would seem the most appropriate. He enjoyed his fame, if not the constant attention, then the recognition of his position as one of the all-time great players. He accepted the spoils of his achievements as well earned, never falling into the category of athletes who called attention to themselves either by audaciousness on the field or obnoxiousness in front of the press, and he followed in the Robinson tradition of taking a public stance when he believed progress for blacks was being stalled.
But that did not mean that Henry was always comfortable with how the baseball hierarchy viewed his worth, which, off of the field, was not as a valuable asset. He demanded that he be taken seriously for his accomplishments, and over the years he would often be caught between conflicting positions. Breaking Ruth's record only emboldened him more. He fought with reporters during the month of July. "I've been saying the same things since 1963!" he would say. He took on Jesse Outlar in a wide-ranging interview, chastising him and anyone else who called Billye "militant."
And there was one real, unforgettable piece of evidence that Henry wasn't the Henry of yore. Ralph Garr's Henry could hit in a fog of controversies. But during July 1974, feeling assaulted by the papers, the front office, and isolated by a new generation, Henry hit just .212 for the month.
In future years, the scenario would repeat itself: Henry avoiding directness, only to bristle at what he would consider a lack of respect for his stature. What he wanted, and admitted later, was inclusion-in the case of the Mathews situation, to be afforded the courtesy of being asked if he was interested in the job, based on his credentials as a player. That was how it was supposed to work. He was baseball royalty, after all. When Mathews was hired, he didn't have to call Bartholomay and ask for the job. Bartholomay had reached out to Matthews, yet in Henry's case, no one seemed to be reaching out.
And he burned because he felt that was what happened when you were black, and if the ultimate goal of the Robinson mission was equal partnership, it was only natural that he be given consideration without having to apply, based on what he had done in the game. The number of players who had become managers was too great to count. Yogi Berra had been a Hall of Fame player and slid immediately into management, managing the Yankees when he was still playing in 1964. That same year, Stan Musial, without a day of experience in the front office, became general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. Henry had been playing twenty years and three of his white teammates-Mathews, Red Schoendienst, and Del Crandall-were already managing in the big leagues.