When Henry took his cuts in the batting cage in Sarasota, and later in that game mashed a 450-foot home run against the Red Sox, a story was born that grew sweeter with each retelling. As Henry whipped blistering line drives through the strike zone, the contact of ball and bat was so pure that one man could recognize its significance by pitch alone. That man was none other than Theodore Samuel Williams.
"In his first spring training, during a game against the Red Sox," George F. Will wrote of Henry in 2007, "Ted Williams came running from the clubhouse to see whose bat was making that distinctive sound." In the book Hammering Hank: How the Media Made Henry Aaron Hammering Hank: How the Media Made Henry Aaron, the authors Mark Stewart and Mike Kennedy offered a slightly different version: Aaron laid claim to a permanent roster40 spot with the Braves after slamming a long home run against the Red Sox. The blast even got the attention of Ted Williams. "Who the hell is that," Williams demanded of some nearby sportswriters after hearing the crack of the ball off Aaron's bat. When told it was a newcomer named Aaron, he responded, "Write it down and remember it. You'll be hearing that name often." spot with the Braves after slamming a long home run against the Red Sox. The blast even got the attention of Ted Williams. "Who the hell is that," Williams demanded of some nearby sportswriters after hearing the crack of the ball off Aaron's bat. When told it was a newcomer named Aaron, he responded, "Write it down and remember it. You'll be hearing that name often."
And still another version existed, the one that had Williams sitting in a lounge chair, his eyes closed, his back to the field, but aroused by the perfection of Henry's swing cutting the Florida air. Even Williams himself, in a 1999 book about Henry by the writer Dick Schaap, recalled the moment with trademark Williams aplomb: I was playing in Sarasota,41 and because I was an older, more experienced player I got to play the first three innings and then-Boom!-they take me out. I went in and showered because I wanted to watch the rest of the game. In Sarasota there was a nice little field and you had to go through a little dugout door and then sit on the bench. So I went out, and just as I dove through the door, I hear 'WHACK!' and then the roar of the crowd-it was a small crowd but it was a helluva roar anyhow-and one of my teammates said, "Did you see the guy hit that ball?" and because I was an older, more experienced player I got to play the first three innings and then-Boom!-they take me out. I went in and showered because I wanted to watch the rest of the game. In Sarasota there was a nice little field and you had to go through a little dugout door and then sit on the bench. So I went out, and just as I dove through the door, I hear 'WHACK!' and then the roar of the crowd-it was a small crowd but it was a helluva roar anyhow-and one of my teammates said, "Did you see the guy hit that ball?"
It was a great story, with plenty of local detail-especially regarding the intimacy of Payne Park, the old Sarasota ballpark-except for one key point: It never happened, at least not the way the legend had it. Williams did not play against the Braves in March 1954. In fact, he did not play against anyone, because he wasn't even in Red Sox camp that year. He was on the operating table twelve hundred miles away in Cambridge, Massachusetts, having a four-inch metal spike inserted into his left collarbone. On March 1, while Henry was making the old-timers drool, Williams broke his collarbone shagging fly balls and was then admitted to Sancta Maria Hospital in Cambridge, where he remained from March 9 until his discharge from surgery a week later. He stayed in Boston following his discharge and didn't play his first game until May 15.
For the record, only the Williams portion of the story was fiction. The rest was true: Henry had them talking.
RED SOX SHADE BRAVES, 32;42 AARON'S HOMER STEALS SHOWSARASOTA, FLA.-... However, even the final result ... could not detract from the stir created in the third inning by a tremendous home run by Hank Aaron, the 20-year-old Negro rookie outfielder. Veteran observers called the blow the longest ever hit at Payne Field here.
True or not, the hype machine had accomplished the desired effect, and Williams and Aaron were both well served by repeating the tale: Williams because it reinforced his considerable reputation, proof that the Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived not only had the keenest eye but also the sharpest ear (it wouldn't have done the Splinter any good if he'd told future generations of hungry listeners that the sweet sound that day was produced by the hitless bat of Jim Pendleton); and Henry because no greater authority than Williams had instantly elevated him into the honors class of power hitters-before he had ever played in a single big-league game that counted. He had been anointed, first by Cobb, and now by Williams. It was true that Williams had seen Henry swing a bat, for the Red Sox and Braves played numerous times that spring and, later, in All-Star Games (they appeared in seven All-Star Games together). He also might have seen Henry during subsequent spring-training seasons, as the Red Sox trained just a dozen or so miles away. It just didn't happen in 1954, when everyone believed it had.
The Williams story was emblematic of how legend could feed upon itself and how, as the tale was repeated, the names grew bigger, everyone just a bit closer to the simple and titillating beginnings of the Henry Aaron story, making it easier for him to be adopted by the baseball people, who, because of their reputations, couldn't allow anyone to think Henry had taken them by surprise.
The next day, March 2, Henry helped destroy the Yankees 113 by turning the baseball into a white blur that hit the base of the wall of the 433-foot marker in center field, over the head of outfielder Irv Noren. "It was not hit as hard as the tremendous home run at Sarasota Wednesday but went almost as far," the Journal Journal reported. "The young Negro now has a .417 batting mark (5 for 12) and looks more like a fixture every day." reported. "The young Negro now has a .417 batting mark (5 for 12) and looks more like a fixture every day."
And it was at that precise moment when fate took over at the keyboard and tapped out a new narrative. When he arrived at Braves camp, Henry was not incorrect about his prospects. The club was set and he was headed to Toledo. He wouldn't be part of the Braves until 1955. The Braves paid handsomely for Thomson, an established power player and veteran outfielder acquired to provide protection for Mathews and first baseman Joe Adcock. And it was true that at the end of the 1953 season, Charlie Grimm so liked what he saw from Pendleton that he began to rely on him as a reserve.
But what Henry did not anticipate was that at the end of 1953, Jim Pendleton was feeling so good about himself and his sudden contribution that by January, he had decided to hold out for a better contract. A week away from the opening of camp, Pendleton still wasn't signed. When camp opened on February 28, and Henry was slashing line drives while the old-timers drooled over his potential, Pendleton was nowhere to be seen. Two days later, on March 2, Pendleton arrived in camp, a big, mushy tire around his waist. He and Henry would room together, but the challenge for a roster spot, for all intents and purposes, ceased the day Pendleton arrived, twenty pounds overweight, at 205.
Pendleton chomping away at the buffet table while Henry tore the cover off of the ball was fate just warming up. In the eighth inning of a spring game between the Braves and Yankees eleven days later, on March 13 at Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, Pafko bounced a one-hopper to the mound. The Yankee pitcher, Bob Wiesler, caught and fired to second baseman Woody Held, who threw to first for a routine double play. But when the play was over, Held looked down, to find the first out of the double play, Bobby Thomson, crumpled in a heap over second base, yowling in pain. Held yelled over to the Braves bench, fear in his eyes at the sight of Thomson's twisted frame, and the world changed in an instant. Thomson had slid to avoid Held's relay and suffered a triple fracture of the right ankle. He was taken off the field on a stretcher and was put in a temporary splint by the Yankees physician, Dr. Sidney Gaynor. When Thomson arrived at St. Anthony's Hospital, he received the news that he would be out at least six to twelve weeks.
The next day, March 14, 1954, at a game against Cincinnati, Charlie Grimm wrote Henry's name into the lineup. He would be starting in right field, batting fourth. Henry rapped out two hits.
WITH T THOMSON GONE for three months, Pendleton wearing a rubber suit to, in the words of the for three months, Pendleton wearing a rubber suit to, in the words of the Sentinel Sentinel, "work off the extra blubber," and Henry's incessant pasting of the baseball ("Aaron Shows Power Again But Phils Down Braves, 1210," announced the Journal Journal after Henry homered and tripled over the head of the center fielder Richie Ashburn), a job on the big-league club seemed all but certain. His new teammates, however, were not exactly sure what to make of him. Despite his wrists, his surprising power, and his obvious ability, there was still something about the kid that just didn't quite compute. The scouting reports said Henry could run, and since he never was thrown out on close plays, it was clear that the scouts were not exaggerating his speed. But instead of blazing down the line in a thrust and flash, Henry would beat throws easily but somehow unconvincingly. Mickey Owen raved about Henry's arm, and at second base, Henry made all the necessary plays. He would snap off a throw that would beat the runner, but the ball didn't after Henry homered and tripled over the head of the center fielder Richie Ashburn), a job on the big-league club seemed all but certain. His new teammates, however, were not exactly sure what to make of him. Despite his wrists, his surprising power, and his obvious ability, there was still something about the kid that just didn't quite compute. The scouting reports said Henry could run, and since he never was thrown out on close plays, it was clear that the scouts were not exaggerating his speed. But instead of blazing down the line in a thrust and flash, Henry would beat throws easily but somehow unconvincingly. Mickey Owen raved about Henry's arm, and at second base, Henry made all the necessary plays. He would snap off a throw that would beat the runner, but the ball didn't pop pop into the first baseman's glove, the way a throw from a legitimate major-league arm should. He would release his throws sidearm, at a three o'clock angle, his arm never higher than his shoulder. In the outfield, the sidearm delivery was the same languid motion, producing the impression that he was not concentrating enough on improving his mechanics. In the outfield, Henry would catch the baseball the old-fashioned way, two hands directly in front of the chest, allowing the ball to travel as close to his body as possible, to cushion the sting of the ball. That was the way poor kids caught the ball, the ones who played baseball every day without gloves or with gloves whose pockets had been worn painfully thin. into the first baseman's glove, the way a throw from a legitimate major-league arm should. He would release his throws sidearm, at a three o'clock angle, his arm never higher than his shoulder. In the outfield, the sidearm delivery was the same languid motion, producing the impression that he was not concentrating enough on improving his mechanics. In the outfield, Henry would catch the baseball the old-fashioned way, two hands directly in front of the chest, allowing the ball to travel as close to his body as possible, to cushion the sting of the ball. That was the way poor kids caught the ball, the ones who played baseball every day without gloves or with gloves whose pockets had been worn painfully thin.
He was reticent to engage. Henry did not often speak to many players on the team, preferring, in the eyes of some teammates and writers, to position himself at a distance, yet no one accused him of possessing a rude demeanor. When he did speak, it was largely to the other Negro players on the team, Bill Bruton, Jim Pendleton, and Charlie White. At no point was he considered by the coaching staff to be lazy, but nor did he move with the frothy enthusiasm and frightened eagerness of most rookies.
So what was the reason for the disconnection? Was it simply that Henry was a green twenty-year-old of blossoming expectation, unsure exactly how to navigate his vast and rapidly expanding universe? Upon his arrival in Bradenton, he knew only three members of the Braves: catcher Bill Casey and pitcher Ray Crone, both of whom were white teammates of Henry in Jacksonville, and Bob Buhl, the promising young right-hander with the serious face and distinctively dark brows, who had earned a slot in the starting rotation by winning thirteen games in 1953 and was quickly being viewed as a potential third starter behind the snarling Burdette and the great Spahn. Buhl hailed from Saginaw, Michigan, and as a teenager had been a paratrooper in World War II. Henry and Buhl were teammates under Mickey Owen in the winter of 1953 in Caguas, and, like Owen, Buhl had made it his personal crusade during the spring to talk up Henry as the next great player.
The opposite was more likely true. In Henry, the Braves had the kind of player who could reverse the fortunes of an entire franchise, but no one in the organization-or in the game, really-knew quite how to deal with what Henry truly represented: the first signature black player in Braves history. Henry's invitation to the Braves training camp was a telegram with the address in Bradenton of Mrs. Lulu Mae Gibson.
Although Henry did not expect an invitation to stay at the Dixie Grande, the posh hotel in Bradenton where the white players lived during the spring, he was not comfortable with the accommodations provided him. The Gibson house was located in the colored section of Bradenton, and it had been the spring-training home for the Braves black players since 1950, when Sam Jethroe arrived as the first black member of the franchise.
In the spring of 1954, Barbara remained home in Alabama, pregnant for the first time. Henry and Barbara had already agreed that the spring-training conditions would not be conducive to living together as a family, as it was unlikely that apartment rentals would be available for colored players, and he was certain that the ball club would not pay for him and his pregnant new wife to be together. Henry would simply follow the other black players-Bruton, Charlie White, Jim Pendleton, and George Crowe-from Mrs. Gibson's house to the ballpark.
The Gibson house was a brick five-bedroom duplex. The main house was connected to a smaller addition, "a little house on stilts,"43 as Henry recalled. During that first spring, he lived in the addition. "Mrs. Gibson was a schoolteacher, and I remember the house was right next to the J. D. Rogers funeral home. She would cook and clean for us and was happy to have us in her home. I remember living in the small house when I first came up." as Henry recalled. During that first spring, he lived in the addition. "Mrs. Gibson was a schoolteacher, and I remember the house was right next to the J. D. Rogers funeral home. She would cook and clean for us and was happy to have us in her home. I remember living in the small house when I first came up."
Henry and the black players were treated better in the private homes of black professionals than in the mainstream, but housing represented the first stage in confronting what it meant for a black prospect to be a full member of the organization. A common attitude regarding racial questions in baseball was that with the arrival of Jackie Robinson in 1947, long inequitable scales had now been balanced. Blacks had been allowed to play at the big-league level for seven years, and thus it was believed that nothing much was left to be discussed. It was a perspective that didn't take into consideration the racial distinctions that existed despite the initial breakthrough. When Henry arrived at the clubhouse at Braves Field that first day, Joe Taylor, the Braves clubhouse man, showed him his locker, a wooden stall with a couple of diagonal nails inside for his jerseys, which would be clumped in with those of the other black players. The lockers of the white players were set apart. During the early weeks that spring, Henry noticed an unspoken practice that was common in baseball: The white players would shower first, then the black players.
And there were many discrepancies with regard to race: what could be said and what could not, who could speak and how, what types of people carried themselves in a given way and why, and what it all meant.
Most importantly, the presumption about who would be forced to sit and take it until the times were different remained. As Henry found during that first spring in 1954, Robinson was only the beginning. The real matters, the ones that made life normal normal, had not yet been addressed to any real degree, evidenced by his living in a rooming house while the white players (and their wives and kids) sat by the pool at the Dixie Grande. Henry tore into the baseball as the black leadership anxiously awaited a verdict in an important Supreme Court case that had been argued for the previous year and a half, Oliver L. Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al Oliver L. Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. The case centered on equal facilities in public schools, but it spoke directly to the contradictions that defined Henry's life: Was it possible for two parallel societies to exist? In Henry's case, to play in the same outfield as white players, to use the same showers (perhaps one day at the same time, even) (perhaps one day at the same time, even), to hit in the same lineup, and yet be prohibited to sleep under the same roof? Henry received a six-dollar per diem for meals, the same as the white players, but in vivid ways he was being shown he was not on an equal basis with his teammates. Across the country, in Arizona, the New York Giants faced similar contradictions. Bill White played for the Giants minor-league system in 1954. He would play thirteen years in the major leagues, hit 202 home runs, and become the first black president of the National League, and to him, the absurdity of the situation was obvious. "I remembered thinking,44 If the accommodations were equal, why did they have to be separate in the first place?" he recalled. "Equal had nothing to do with it once you stepped off the field. They never thought we were equal. That's why we couldn't live where they were living." If the accommodations were equal, why did they have to be separate in the first place?" he recalled. "Equal had nothing to do with it once you stepped off the field. They never thought we were equal. That's why we couldn't live where they were living."
MOTHER GIBSON SERVES VERY.
TASTY TABLE45 TO THE NEGRO TO THE NEGRO.
MEMBERS OF BRAVES SQUADBRADENTON, FLA.-"Come and get it, boys."Three of the Braves' Negro players answered the breakfast call at Mrs. Gibson's home where they live."This is really like home," said outfielder Billy Bruton as he sat down to his platter of bacon, fried eggs and hot biscuits."It sure tastes like home cooking," agreed outfielder Henry Aaron...."Wonderful boys, all of them," said Mrs. Gibson, a broad smile lighting her face.
There were no complaints about the food. ("Mrs. Gibson must be the original home of southern fried chicken," Braves assistant trainer and clubhouse man Joe Taylor said. "Hers is the best I've ever eaten." But in a low and steady murmur, plenty of dissent was expressed regarding the system that forced Henry Aaron and Sam Jethroe to sit at Mrs. Gibson's dinner table in the first place. When the time was right, it was Bruton (always beware of the quiet ones) who led the fight to eliminate segregated housing during spring training in the major leagues, thereby bringing to an end a valuable source of income and a sense of belonging for Mrs. Gibson and the other middle-class black families that took on the traveling famous-baseball players, jazz and bluesmen, all the blacks who were good enough to provide entertainment to whites but not good enough to occupy a hotel room. That spring, when integration existed in theory only, Lulu Gibson took pride in caring for her Braves, and she soon felt betrayed by the fact that Henry and "her boys" were angling to leave.
"Mrs. Gibson's was the best choice at that time,"46 Henry recalled. "When integration came, she thought we were turning her down, and she was not happy about that. To her, it was a choice. To us, we wanted to have the same opportunity everyone else on the ball club had." Henry recalled. "When integration came, she thought we were turning her down, and she was not happy about that. To her, it was a choice. To us, we wanted to have the same opportunity everyone else on the ball club had."
During a meeting of player representatives during the 1961 All-Star Game in Boston, Bruton and Bill White canvassed support from the nascent players association and the white players, of whom Bill White said, "[They] only see us at the ballpark." White by then was playing with St. Louis, Bruton with Detroit. It was White, focusing in the 1961 meeting on the new franchise awarded to Houston, who suggested that black players refuse to participate in cities that did not offer integrated housing. It was Bruton who said it was time for white players to support their black and Latino teammates off of the field.
"Behind the scenes, we made things happen.47 We integrated before the military, before the schools. We were the first ones," Bill White recalled. "In a lot of places, we integrated hotels and housing in Florida before the civil rights movement. It started with Jackie, but Henry and Billy Bruton and Frank Robinson and me, too. When Atlanta came in the league, Willie Stargell said in a meeting that unless everyone could buy a ticket and sit wherever they wanted to, we shouldn't play there. We all had to deal with it. People always talked about how we handled living while America was changing. Hell, We integrated before the military, before the schools. We were the first ones," Bill White recalled. "In a lot of places, we integrated hotels and housing in Florida before the civil rights movement. It started with Jackie, but Henry and Billy Bruton and Frank Robinson and me, too. When Atlanta came in the league, Willie Stargell said in a meeting that unless everyone could buy a ticket and sit wherever they wanted to, we shouldn't play there. We all had to deal with it. People always talked about how we handled living while America was changing. Hell, we we were the ones who changed America." were the ones who changed America."
In the spring, in between the long home runs that created myth and the nervousness of being a twenty-year-old trying to make a big-league roster, Henry represented the upsetting of another social layer. He was, along with Willie Mays, baseball's first black superprospect, touted as a teenager, groomed by a big-league organization through the traditional, integrated minor-league system. Henry played in the Negro Leagues, but as a teenager who hadn't finished high school, and his future would be radically different from that of his Indianapolis Clowns teammates, the men for whom the times wouldn't change fast enough. The Negro Leagues were never a destination for Henry, and that made him different from the rest. Even Robinson at first believed Branch Rickey had selected him to be part of a potential Negro League rival.
Evaluation of baseball talent was one thing-everybody in the Milwaukee system during spring training knew Henry had a special talent. Judging him as a man, however, was a completely different story. Two years earlier, in Buffalo, Henry had been questioned about how he conducted himself. Milwaukee scout Dewey Griggs, who signed Henry, asked him if he had another gear, which meant could he throw harder, put more snap on the ball, run harder, look like he was putting a full sweat into it. Griggs thought that Henry's pace-languid to his coaches-might be problematic in a baseball environment where players were constantly and openly testing one another's commitment level, and he asked Henry if he could run faster, if he could play more quickly than he was showing at that particular moment, and Henry said that he could. And Griggs asked him why he didn't show maximum effort, each time, all the time, and Henry told him he was following old advice from Herbert Aaron: "Never move faster than you have to."
If you came from Wilcox County, where the work was merciless and the future nonexistent, the maxim might have made more sense. Never move faster than you have to Never move faster than you have to. In Herbert Aaron's America, these were genius words, essential passages in his personal survival guide, the strategy employed by poor blacks to conserve the energy they would need for the backbreaking tasks they would face every day for rest of their lives, tasks that would weigh on Herbert Aaron, with no relief and no justice in sight. And the words represented something else: a subtle articulation of the black man's revenge, the poor man's only fighting weapon. For whether you moved quickly or leisurely, the day's worth of work still awaited; the load never lightened. There was no reward of promotion or of prosperity, hope just a dream on a kind horizon. Working faster would not lead to more respect or more rest, a larger share of the profits, or a better life. It would not change your prospects in the eyes of the boss or create a reexamination of the system that profited from your sweat and crushed you in the process. If you asked for more, the southern system would rather kill you than make you an equal partner in the American dream. Working faster would not better your position in the company. The only thing fast work produced was more work. In Herbert Aaron's America, appealing to the boss was the worst worst thing you could do. It was just a waste of energy, because the status of the black laborer in the South always remained the same. thing you could do. It was just a waste of energy, because the status of the black laborer in the South always remained the same.
On the ball field, Henry had not yet learned this key piece of survival, and on the sun-and-dust ball fields in Bradenton, Dewey Griggs attempted to clue Henry in on how baseball's version of office politics really worked. In baseball, perceived effort was often as important as actually working hard, and the appearance of working hard carried a great deal of value. Players with less physical talent knew it the best, for they were the guys whose very survival in the game depended on a manager or a coach believing that his lack of talent gave him a greater desire than the more gifted players, thus making him more valuable. Baseball managers often connected best with these players, the ones whose arms pumped and teeth clenched when they chugged helplessly to first, out by a mile. Since the great majority of baseball managers at one time themselves had had marginal ability and had to compensate with toughness and maximum effort, the player who used tenacity to compensate for a lack of foot speed often reminded the skipper of himself when he was young. It was the guy who couldn't run who had to run the hardest, to prove that he was willing to overcome his physical limitations with extra effort. And in the dugout, there was no shame in that-unless, that is, you were trying to score unearned points with the manager. Baseball linguistics provided terminology for the culprits who embodied each end of the scale. The term was jaking it jaking it for the player who did not hustle and lacked work ethic, and for the player who did not hustle and lacked work ethic, and goldbricking goldbricking was the special designation for the players who mastered the fine art of false hustle. And it was always surprising just how many people in the big-league hierarchy- players, managers, executives, coaches, and members of the press-fell for the act. was the special designation for the players who mastered the fine art of false hustle. And it was always surprising just how many people in the big-league hierarchy- players, managers, executives, coaches, and members of the press-fell for the act.
There was a difference between the player who played hard but could make it look easy and the guy who gave it his all gave it his all, buttons popping, tumbling in the outfield, all to make a routine catch. The latter was a guy the shrewdest players in the dugout could sniff out faster than a bloodhound.
In the beginning, Henry paid a severe price for not exploiting these subtle, variable distinctions, which took on greater significance with black players. In later years, once his talent had secured his legend, he would be applauded for running and fielding so effortlessly. As a twenty-year-old in his first spring camp, the unscientific art of reading body language never seemed to work in his favor, even as he revealed the depth of his awesome potential to his teammates. The initial impressions of his teammates were often harsh, exposing less about who Henry Aaron was as a man and more about the racial attitudes that supported an order that was supposed to be crumbling.
"SLOW MOTION" AARON BECOMES48 COLORFUL FIGURE IN BRAVES' CAMPBRADENTON, FLA.-Henry Aaron is gradually becoming accustomed to major league surroundings. When he joined the Braves here three weeks ago, the 20-year-old Mobile (Ala.) Negro acted scared.... The bewildered rookie now acts like he is one of the gang. He smiles when Joe Adcock calls him "Slow Motion Henry" because he shuffles on and off the field.
OFTEN, the white boys would slip beyond the light joshing, and the true face behind the mask would reveal itself. Joshing with Henry was never easy anyway, because while he liked to laugh, he did not like to be teased. Sometimes his teammates would watch him in the field, walking easily, and it would reinforce not only stereotypes about how a black man moved but the widely held paternalist belief that blacks did not take work, whether baseball or otherwise, as seriously as whites. Sometimes the slights could feel like pinpricks, nagging and annoying, reminders to the black players that they were different. Whenever a black power hitter reached the majors, the adjective du jour was husky husky. "[Grimm's] first sacker was George Crowe, husky Negro, a graduate of the Eastern League," the Journal Journal wrote in 1951. wrote in 1951.
Where matters became sticky was in the eye of the person doing the evaluating and whether he recognized his own prejudices, for the belief systems about what people were, in the case of black players in particular, of how hard they were willing to work, were capable of playing tricks on even the sharpest eyes. And that was why, if you were a white player watching Henry in those days, you had to ask yourself a question: Was he actually acting any differently from the thousands of inexperienced rookie ballplayers who had come before him?
Joe Adcock was the first player about whom Henry was wary. Adcock was a son of the South, the South Henry Aaron had escaped either by daydreaming as a boy or by leaving as a teenager. Adcock was born two years before the onset of the Depression in the unsparing poverty and rigid segregation of Coushatta, Louisiana. He would grow to six four and 220 pounds. He was a star athlete in football and basketball. He played college football at Louisiana State University in the mid-1940s and chose baseball over the National Football League because Cincinnati signed him first.
When southern resistance to Reconstruction reached its violent apex, Coushatta was the town best known for the Coushatta Massacre, when in August 1874 a mob of whites calling themselves the White League accosted members of the town's political leadership, whites and their black followers, and threatened to murder each if they did not leave town. As the group of sixty blacks and six whites left the town limits, heading to Texas unarmed, they were followed and murdered by a gang of forty Coushatta whites, who chased them down and shot each one of them to death.
Once in the spring, Adcock noticed Henry's running style, nearly motionless from the waist up. Because Henry compensated for an ankle injury suffered when he was young, his stride was not always fluid. Adcock decided that Henry ran stiff-legged, and he coined another new nickname for the rookie, one that the press occasionally repeated. "Slow Motion Henry" wasn't enough. Adcock now called him "Snowshoes." In these instances, Henry might smile or pretend he did not hear. Spahn, he of the extensive vocabulary and cutting wit, might call you out, yelling something clever across the diamond or the clubhouse, shredding his tormentor into verbal ribbons. Mathews, on a dark day, might just break your jaw if you pushed him the wrong way. Henry was not an emotionally confrontational man. He would not say anything, and that made him in those years easy to underestimate. If Jackie Robinson would spark and combust, Henry would collect information about the people around him, quietly sharpening his judgments while smoldering privately at the same time, like the day he sat in a bathroom stall and overheard Adcock talking about "niggers." "He was talking about something,"49 Henry said. "I don't remember the whole conversation, but he said to somebody, 'You couldn't see a nigger if they put you in the middle of Harlem.'" There was no confrontation with Adcock that day, or any other during the decade they would play as teammates, but Henry knew he would never let Joe Adcock take him by surprise. He knew where Adcock stood, and to Henry, that gave him an advantage. Henry said. "I don't remember the whole conversation, but he said to somebody, 'You couldn't see a nigger if they put you in the middle of Harlem.'" There was no confrontation with Adcock that day, or any other during the decade they would play as teammates, but Henry knew he would never let Joe Adcock take him by surprise. He knew where Adcock stood, and to Henry, that gave him an advantage.
To Chuck Tanner, Henry was a threat both to the order and to his new teammates. Like Henry, Tanner had been invited to the big-league camp and, like Henry, was not on the Milwaukee roster in the spring of 1954. Tanner was an outfielder who had first been signed by the Boston Braves in 1946 but had advanced slowly through the ranks. Tanner was born on Independence Day, 1929, in the tough mining town of New Castle, Pennsylvania, three and a half months before the stock market crash. Tanner immediately understood racial and ethnic divisions, divisions that were often muted because of the grinding poverty of the region. "We had so many different people50 from where we came from-Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, and a few blacks-you couldn't pronounce the last names of most of the people on my block," Tanner recalled. "And believe me, when you had that many different people in one area, things could get heated. But none of us from where we came from-Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, and a few blacks-you couldn't pronounce the last names of most of the people on my block," Tanner recalled. "And believe me, when you had that many different people in one area, things could get heated. But none of us had had anything, so it was hard for anyone to feel superior. When I was a kid, we all traded fruits and vegetables with one another instead of money, just so we could eat." anything, so it was hard for anyone to feel superior. When I was a kid, we all traded fruits and vegetables with one another instead of money, just so we could eat."
By 1954, Tanner had been in the Braves minor-league system for seven years and was not exactly certain he would ever make the major leagues. Tanner's experiences gave him special insight into how established players could view a player so extremely gifted as Henry. While it was not a surprise to him that those from the Deep South, like Adcock, would be difficult, Tanner believed that racism, or even simple insensitivity, was secondary to a certain kind of professional jealousy and a certain amount of fear both on the part of some of Henry's peers as well as the writers.
"The bottom line is that they were jealous of him," Tanner recalled. "In those days, nobody wanted to go back to the farm, and Henry Aaron was so good, they knew that. They knew he he wasn't going to be the one going back to the farm. He made everything look so easy that even the writers hated him for it at first. Henry didn't run; he wasn't going to be the one going back to the farm. He made everything look so easy that even the writers hated him for it at first. Henry didn't run; he glided glided. He just had so much ability. He could make everything look so easy, and I think people resented him for that."
The hazing was more a by-product of the players' insecurities reaching the surface, Chuck Tanner believed. What increased the intensity was another layer of change white players were being forced to confront: There now would not only be black players in the game but the greater number of black players on a roster, the more white players who would be losing their jobs to blacks. It was bad enough to get sent out to the minors because a better player took your job, but it was even worse for a white player to lose out to a black. The thing the white players feared most, Tanner thought, was having to explain to all the guys back home that they weren't as good as the black guys coming into the league.
And Henry left Bradenton leading his team in home runs, extra base hits, and runs batted in. On the final day of spring training, the Braves purchased his minor-league contract from Toledo. George Selkirk's premonition had come true. Henry would never play a game in Toledo. His big-league contract paid the major-league minimum salary of six thousand dollars per year. Charlie Grimm told him he was the starting left fielder, with Bruton in center and Pafko in right. As the team headed north to begin the season, Joe Taylor, the Braves equipment manager, told Henry to keep the number he wore during the spring. He would wear number 5.
CHAPTER FOUR.
MILWAUKEE.
IT WAS A strange way to start a renaissance, by leaving a big town full of history and power and influence for a medium-sized midwestern town with an inferiority complex, virtually anonymous, both in terms of national prominence and importance on the baseball map. strange way to start a renaissance, by leaving a big town full of history and power and influence for a medium-sized midwestern town with an inferiority complex, virtually anonymous, both in terms of national prominence and importance on the baseball map.
Since the end of the Spanish-American War, the Braves had been looking for love, and they never quite found it in Boston. The team was formed in 1871, thirty years before the Red Sox, first as the Boston Red Stockings of the National Association and then, in 1876, as the Boston Red Caps, one of the inaugural eight franchises of the newly formed National League of Professional Baseball Clubs. The Red Caps finished fourth that year, but they were fortified by an admirable stamina-they didn't finish in the money, but they remained in business. Neither the New York Mutuals nor the Philadelphia Athletics (both of which were expelled after one season) could say that. The Hartford Dark Blues, the St. Louis Brown Stockings, and the Louisville Grays all folded after the league's second season. The Cincinnati Red Stockings were expelled by the league following the 1880 season, in part for the high offense of selling beer to fans. Of the original eight franchises that comprised the National Association, only the Chicago White Stockings (later to become the Cubs) and the Red Caps would survive the years.
For a time, life in Boston was beautiful. The franchise played in Roxbury, at the South End Grounds and later at Braves Field, both parks within throwing distance of Fenway Park, later the home of the newly formed Red Sox in the upstart American League. The Braves were an immediate dynasty, winning four pennants in the five-year existence of the National Association, and in their first twenty-two years after joining the National League, they won eight more. The team was managed by accomplished baseball men Harry Wright and Frank Selee, men who would wind up in Cooperstown, and it would forever live in memory for the magical year of 1914, the year the Braves were in last place, sporting a record of 3343, eleven and a half games back of John McGraw's New York Giants on July 15, and yet the Braves were popping corks by October, finishing the season winning sixty-one of their final seventy-seven games, to end up with the pennant, ten and a half games in first. The "Miracle Braves," as they would be known forever more, completed the conquest a week later, sweeping Connie Mack's legendary Philadelphia A's in four straight in the 1914 World Series.
Over the years, the name changed, from the Red Caps to the Beaneaters to the Doves to the Rustlers to the Braves to the Bees and, finally and permanently, in 1941, back to the Braves. Yet three truths remained constant: The first was that despite the changing nickname, the team always remained a bedrock constant in Boston. The second was that once the twentieth century began, the Braves were patently awful. It didn't matter if the manager was Rogers Hornsby (50103 in 1928) or Casey Stengel (373491, for a .432 winning percentage over six seasons), or the players were Walter "Rabbit" Maranville or a forty-year-old fat and finished Babe Ruth (.181 batting average in twenty-three games for a team that would finish 38115 in 1935). In the seasons between the Miracle Braves and the 1948 club that surprised everyone by winning the pennant (and were one agonizing one-game play-off away from playing the Red Sox in what would have been the only all-Boston World Series), the Braves finished in the second division. That was the kind way of saying fifth place, or worse-twenty-six times in the thirty-two seasons between pennants.
The third truth was that almost from the start, the American League Red Sox possessed an uncanny ability to attract attention in a way their august, stiffer National League counterparts certainly could not. The Red Sox arrived in 1901, and they were champions by 1903 after winning the first-ever World Series between the rival leagues, dousing Pittsburgh in a raucous affair. While the Braves puttered around in the muddy old confines of the South End Grounds in Roxbury, the Red Sox built their grand ballpark, Fenway Park, in the Fenway section of town in 1912. The Red Sox were interesting in victory and defeat during the teen years, building a following with championship teams in 1912, 1915, 1916, and 1918. The Braves were established, but the Red Sox were exciting, with big names and bigger personalities-among them Cy Young, "Smokey Joe" Wood, Tris Speaker, and, of course, one George Herman Ruth-names so big that, despite the unquestioned dominance of the Braves before the Red Sox ever existed, future generations would accept as fact that Boston always had been an American League town.
It was a momentum that never slowed. Thomas A. Yawkey purchased the Red Sox in 1933, and the Braves had no one to compete with the headline-generating bombast of Ted Williams or Yawkey's fruitless opulence. Winning the pennant in 1948 did not change the Braves second-place status, and Frank Lane, the general manager of the Chicago White Sox, began to articulate a prediction about the future that seemed too scary, too foreign to accept as anything but radical.
"Two-club cities, with the exception of New York and Chicago," Lane said, "are doomed."
MILWAUKEE WAS ONCE a big-league town. The year was 1901, the first year of the American League, and the team, the Milwaukee Brewers, was ironically an early incarnation of the St. Louis Browns/Baltimore Orioles. The Brewers that year won forty-eight games (out of 137, a winning percentage of .350, good for last place) in their only season in Milwaukee before moving to St. Louis. It wasn't that the good people of Milwaukee ("Good Burghers," the press called them) didn't love their baseball, but more that the barons, who ran the game, didn't exactly love them back. Another edition of the Milwaukee Brewers arrived in 1902 and played in the minor-league American Association for the next fifty years, and that's what Milwaukee would be, a big-league town. The year was 1901, the first year of the American League, and the team, the Milwaukee Brewers, was ironically an early incarnation of the St. Louis Browns/Baltimore Orioles. The Brewers that year won forty-eight games (out of 137, a winning percentage of .350, good for last place) in their only season in Milwaukee before moving to St. Louis. It wasn't that the good people of Milwaukee ("Good Burghers," the press called them) didn't love their baseball, but more that the barons, who ran the game, didn't exactly love them back. Another edition of the Milwaukee Brewers arrived in 1902 and played in the minor-league American Association for the next fifty years, and that's what Milwaukee would be, minor-league minor-league, through two world wars and the Depression. For a time, being called "minor-league" did not sting, for the city took pride in its baseball team and Borchert Field, its rickety old home, adopting the position that it, like much of the rest of the custom and personality of Milwaukee, may not have translated easily to the outside world but, inside, was representative of how the community viewed itself.
Milwaukee was a city founded by French fur traders and speculators. Nestled on the western edge of Lake Michigan, it united originally by conflict. Two independent, rival communities-Juneautown on the east banks of the Milwaukee River, founded by Solomon Juneau, and Kilbourntown, on the west, founded by Byron Kilbourn-lived in relative hostility during the early 1840s. When the Kilbourntown supporters dumped a whole section of a proposed drawbridge into the river, ostensibly to hamper and isolate the economic prospects of Juneautown, the famous Milwaukee Bridge War ensued. The weeks of fighting resulted in the unification of the two factions into one city in 1845.
The French arrived first, but the enduring fabric of the city was shaped by the heavy influx of German immigrants in the mid-1800s and the social and political customs they brought to their new world. There would be lasting examples of the city's uniqueness. Milwaukee would be the only major American city to elect three Socialist mayors, and even as late as World War I, no city outside of New York City would house as many different immigrant groups as would Milwaukee. And in line with its German-Austrian immigrant roots, there would be agriculture and education and social progressiveness and beer, not always in that order.
The population surged, and the powerful German heritage mixed with that of the fast-rising pockets of Poles, Jews, Hungarians and Austrians, and some Western European immigrants (the first Milwaukee City Hall, built in 1891, was designed in the Flemish Renaissance style). During the first fifty years of incorporation, Milwaukee grew from roughly 20,000 residents to nearly 300,000. Between 1880 and 1890 alone, the population grew by 76 percent. World War I threatened the social fabric of the city as the allegiance of German immigrants was tested, prompting the Milwaukee Journal Milwaukee Journal to inflame tensions by accusing the to inflame tensions by accusing the Germania-Herold Germania-Herold, the German newspaper, of disloyalty. The sensibilities of Milwaukee Germans were so frayed that by the end of the war, many believed Prohibition became a reality in part as a reaction to a disturbing backlash of anti-German sentiment. Still, the city grew. By the late 1940s, the population exceeded 600,000 (times were so good that even the Milwaukee Journal Milwaukee Journal, on the flag of the paper, right next to the weather and the date, listed its circulation, proof of its muscle, its upward mobility). In the years following World War II, with the population booming, Milwaukee wanted more. It wanted baseball, big-league baseball, and there was no longer anything quaint or endearing about the term minor-league minor-league.
The layers of change that enveloped baseball in the early 1950s were not limited to white players growing accustomed to having black teammates. The changes also presented a challenge to the barons of the game to see more clearly beyond the confining borders of the past and determine which of them possessed the vision to navigate a fluid future.
No team had relocated since 1903, when the Baltimore Orioles moved to become the New York Highlanders, or its better-known nom de voyage nom de voyage, the Yankees, but the larger forces of postwar expansion and advances in technology and travel could not be suppressed. Frank Lane had predicted that the two-team city structure that had been a fixture since the turn of the century was dead, and only the most stubborn owners could disagree with him. There was a new baseball phrase for the growing number of cities in an expanding America that hungered for baseball. The term-big-league ready-was one that only a few members of the old guard were ready to adopt, but Braves owner Lou Perini and Cubs owner Phillip K. Wrigley were baseball's two biggest evangelists for expansion. "The entire map of Organized Baseball should be reorganized so that baseball can keep pace with the growth of the nation," Wrigley said in 1951. It was a sentiment that spoke directly to Lou Perini.
Louis Perini was a New Englander, born and raised in the rural town of Ashland, Massachusetts, about twenty miles west of Boston. Yet Perini was never limited in his worldview. As a boy, he worked for his father's construction company, and according to the family legend, six-year-old Louis would fetch pails of water for his father's crew of hungry workers. In 1924, when Louis was twenty-one, his father died and left the family construction business to his sons. Louis became president of the new company, and even through the Depression years, he was able to amass and maintain a hefty fortune. Nearing the end of World War II, in January 1944, Lou Perini partnered with Joseph Maney and Guido Rugo, along with a consortium of minority partners, to purchase a controlling interest in the Braves from Bob Quinn. The three construction men turned baseball owners were known as "the Three Little Steam Shovels," and their first order of business was to bounce Stengel as manager and revive the moribund franchise. Within three years, the Braves were contenders. In the fourth, in 1948, the Braves drew 1.3 million fans and won the pennant, although they lost to Cleveland in the World Series.
Lou Perini saw himself as a visionary, and compared to the owners whose idea of progress was to view the coming of television as the death of baseball, he was. Perini believed in expansion. In the 1940s, he wanted baseball scouts to begin searching in Europe-both to in his words, "spread the gospel of the game" and to develop new talent markets outside of the United States. Perini believed Los Angeles deserved a baseball team, and he saw California as the great growth area of the country. "And let's interpolate this opinion: in 25 years California will have more people than any state in the U.S.A.," he said in 1951. "Can the major leagues afford to stand still?" He thought Milwaukee and Houston were "big-league ready," which was where one of his key visions entered the picture in 1951: a twelve-team league with franchises in California, Montreal, Mexico City, and even Havana, Cuba.
For a time, Perini did not believe his own club a candidate for relocation, and he had his reasons. One was his commitment to Boston. In the years 1947 through 1949, both the Braves and Red Sox drew over one million fans, suggesting that if both clubs fielded competitive teams, the city possessed the resources and will to support both. But the Braves never outdrew the Red Sox during those years, and at least some of the attendance figures on both sides were boosted by American euphoria over the end of the war years. Cleveland, for example, drew 2.6 million fans when it won the World Series in 1948, but the next season, when pennant-winning clubs usually enjoyed a significant spike in attendance, the team drew 400,000 fewer fans.
Another of Perini's convictions in 1951 was that within five years the Braves would be the powerhouse in baseball, on a par with-if not better than-the Dodgers and the Yankees. One key piece-the pitcher Warren Spahn-was already in place, and in 1950, the Braves had traded for another, moving an aging Johnny Sain to the Yankees for a young right-hander named Selva Lewis Burdette. There were third baseman Eddie Mathews, the young shortstop Johnny Logan, and two black prospects, the lightning-fast outfielder Bill Bruton and George Crowe, a hard-hitting first baseman. Even more promising for Perini was that at each level the Braves farm system had been tearing up the minor leagues.
In 1950, Perini invited two friends to attend the All-Star Game at Comiskey Park in Chicago, the legendary Notre Dame football coach Frank Leahy and Fred C. Miller, the president of the Miller Brewing Company. During the game, Miller asked Perini if he was interested in selling the Braves to him and expressed his intention of moving them to Milwaukee. Perini declined, but he agreed to Miller's request that Perini not move or sell the Braves without first speaking with him. The following year, on July 1, 1951, the Boston Traveler Boston Traveler published an item about a group of Milwaukee businessmen interested in purchasing equity in the Braves, with the intention of relocating the team to Milwaukee. Perini, not willing to accept the old Hollywood adage that the rumors are always true, laughed the story off as ridiculous. "The whole thing is utterly fantastic. published an item about a group of Milwaukee businessmen interested in purchasing equity in the Braves, with the intention of relocating the team to Milwaukee. Perini, not willing to accept the old Hollywood adage that the rumors are always true, laughed the story off as ridiculous. "The whole thing is utterly fantastic.51 The Braves will remain in Boston, which is where they belong," Perini said. "I believe that some day Milwaukee will have a major-league franchise, but that will not come to pass until the entire structure of baseball is changed. I can assure everyone that the franchise that Milwaukee may obtain eventually will not be the Braves franchise." The Braves will remain in Boston, which is where they belong," Perini said. "I believe that some day Milwaukee will have a major-league franchise, but that will not come to pass until the entire structure of baseball is changed. I can assure everyone that the franchise that Milwaukee may obtain eventually will not be the Braves franchise."
Less funny was the massive financial hit the Three Little Steam Shovels were taking with the Braves in Boston. In 1950, Perini lost a quarter of a million dollars. The following year, the attendance at Braves Field dropped by nearly half, to 6,250 fans per game.
Future retellings of the Braves demise would always contain a delicious element of the unknown-of what might have been had the Braves remained in Boston another few years and the flowering of the club had taken place there instead of in Milwaukee. Perini had alienated fans, in part by selling off key members of the 1948 pennant team, such as Alvin Dark, Johnny Sain, and Eddie Stanky, but a powerful young nucleus was forming on the club, just at the time when the Red Sox were about to begin a deep and precipitous slide into irrelevancy.
Bill Veeck, the iconoclastic owner of the St. Louis Browns, had realized that St. Louis was not big enough for two teams, and Veeck began searching for relocation possibilities. Suddenly, the gold rush was on, and the teams that never had a prime market to call their own were racing to find the promised land. Milwaukee was first, or a booming equivalent. Veeck wanted to move to Milwaukee, to return the Browns to their original home of fifty years earlier. A group of businessmen from Houston took an interest in purchasing the Cardinals when the owner, Fred Saigh, under federal investigation for tax irregularities, put the team up for sale. Veeck disclosed that a year before Fred Miller's discussion with Perini at the All-Star Game in 1950, Fred Miller had contacted him and spoken of the possibility of moving the Browns to Milwaukee, and the two would speak again for the next two years, even though Veeck's real dream was to move the Browns to Los Angeles. He'd tried in 1944, but wartime travel restrictions made it impossible for one team to be located two thousand miles from the next closest club. Plus, Veeck was never popular enough with his fellow owners to be allowed so audacious and potentially lucrative a move.
Perini held the advantage in Milwaukee. His relationship with Miller was strong and he also owned the minor-league club, the Brewers, and held an existing lease on Milwaukee County Stadium. He promised five million dollars in stadium renovations, ostensibly for the Brewers, who had outgrown Borchert Field. The true motive for County Stadium, naturally, was to attract a big-league team. When Perini denied he would ever sell the Braves to any consortium of Milwaukee businessmen, he was being accurate, albeit in a convoluted way. Parse the words, peel off the layers of the onion, and in many ways Perini had shown his hand back in 1951. Milwaukee wouldn't land a team "until the entire structure of baseball is changed." It was true: He was not going to sell, but he was going to change the entire structure in one stroke. He was going to move the Braves to Milwaukee himself.
In January 1952, Perini wagered his greatest and last gamble in Boston, spending thirty thousand dollars to charter a Pan American Airways jet to publicize the star players of the Braves farm system. Perini invited five Boston writers, plus a radio commentator and his publicity man, to fly to the hometowns of eighteen of the club's top prospects, as well as five more who were playing in Puerto Rico and Cuba. The final stop of the 10,361-mile journey was Santa Barbara, California, home of Eddie Mathews, the twenty-year-old slugging third baseman. The jet was dubbed the "Rookie Rocket," and had it departed six months later, an eighteen-year-old Henry Aaron, playing shortstop in Eau Claire, likely would have merited a stop on the tour.
In the end, the 1952 season broke Lou Perini. On April 15, Spahn lost to the Dodgers 32 in front of an opening-day crowd of 4,694. On May 14, 1,105 showed up for the Braves-Pirates game. In the final home game of the season against the Dodgers, 8,822 watched Joe Black beat the home team. The final attendance for the season at Braves Field was 281,278, or an average of 3,563 fans per game, an 80 percent drop in attendance from the 1948 World Series team just four seasons earlier.
The Braves arrived in Bradenton as vagabonds. Perini knew the club would not likely return to Boston for the 1953 season, and he began planning his escape. The cover of the 1953 spring press guide had been redone, removing the name Boston. The new guide did not specify a city, reading simply "The Braves." During the winter of 1952, Perini engaged in a little behind-the-scenes horse trading. He cajoled his fellow owners to relax the tight restrictions on franchise moves by allowing a major-league team to move into the same territory of a minor-league team without permission from the team or its league. The rule allowed Perini to move into Milwaukee, since he already owned the Brewers. Perini then consolidated his power base, buying out all of his minority partners-including two of the original Steam Shovels, Guido Rugo and Joseph Maney-and replacing them with his two brothers, thus eliminating any potential objection within ownership to a move to Wisconsin. Of the owners, Perini was particularly focused on canvassing Phil Wrigley of the Cubs, Ruly Carpenter of the Phillies, and Connie Mack of the Athletics for support, the owners who shared their cities with another club. He was also keeping a watchful eye on St. Louis, where the Cardinals were for sale, knowing a group of Texas businessmen were hot to move the venerable Redbirds to Houston. Perini told his old friend Wrigley that he needed to support the proposal to make it easier to one day have the city of Chicago to himself. When the sale of the Cardinals to beer magnate August Busch was approved, Perini knew he could count on the support of Bill Veeck, who realized the Cardinals were not going to Houston and now had the resources to become a St. Louis institution once again. That confirmed what Veeck long knew: His St. Louis Browns would again be on the move and would need support.
On March 19, 1953, at a meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida, the league owners approved Perini's request to transfer the Boston National League franchise to Milwaukee, while rejecting Veeck, who had accepted the second-place prize of Baltimore. At the time of the approval, the Braves were in the fifth inning, playing in a spring-training game. On the scoreboard in Bradenton, the name for the home team read BOS. By the end, the home team was MIL.
The Braves now belonged to Milwaukee.
The sale was complete, but not without a touch of irony. Five years after Perini had successfully lobbied the owners to ease the relocation process, Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, engineered the most famous and polarizing relocation in the history of American professional sports. He had voted for the rules and the relocation, while lamenting that the changes would create a "shifting carnival."
Still, it galled Perini that he, a native son of Boston, was being forced to move, while that MichiganSouth Carolina carpetbagger Yawkey, who would never even purchase a permanent residence in the forty-three years he owned the Red Sox, positioned himself as the guardian of Boston baseball. Yawkey and Boston never warmed to each other until 1967, the single most important year in the baseball history of the city (the Red Sox went to the World Series, losing to St. Louis), when more than a decade of losing was wiped clean by the "Impossible Dream" Red Sox. Before then, Yawkey had been disillusioned with baseball and, more to the point, the city politicians who refused to build him a new stadium with public money. To Johnny Logan, it was just another reason why he felt the gods rained on the Boston Braves. If Mathews, Bruton, and Aaron could have reached the majors together as a unit, it might have been the Red Sox who left town. "With the team we had,52 we would have turned Boston upside down," Logan said. "If we had stayed, we would have owned that city. I was hoping we could stick just a little longer. But we left." we would have turned Boston upside down," Logan said. "If we had stayed, we would have owned that city. I was hoping we could stick just a little longer. But we left."
Even Perini's successes were somehow either obscured by or co-opted by the Red Sox. In a city always unable to escape its racial contradictions and confrontations, Perini was never part of Boston's racially unattractive narrative. The Braves were one of the first teams in baseball to integrate, with center fielder Sam Jethroe winning the National League Rookie of the Year award in 1950, and had the Braves remained, the Boston sports scene would have showcased Henry Aaron and Bill Russell (not to mention a fading but always compelling Ted Williams), both at the height of their powers. It was Perini and his ownership group and not Tom Yawkey or the Red Sox that founded the Jimmy Fund, and yet over the decades the famous charity would become synonymous with the Boston Red Sox.
And it galled him equally that he truly was a man of vision, a person who embraced the future as a place of wide opportunity-indeed, the leagues would expand to California, expand internationally, and embrace television, ideas that Perini supported years before his contemporaries. By comparison, Yawkey would be one of the least dynamic owners in the history of the sport, one who viewed change as something to be suppressed. Following the first transcontinental broadcast of a baseball game in 1951, the common attitude toward television was that televising home games would not be a great advertising tool to attract fans or build a greater following for teams whose fans could not attend a game. Instead, it would negatively affect the home gate. Yawkey refused to broadcast even a third of Boston's home games at Fenway Park. Perini, meanwhile, broadcast sixty-three of the seventy-seven Braves home games. Yawkey would be the name synonymous with baseball ownership in Boston, while Perini was left ashen and melancholy. "Ever since I got into baseball I have given considerable thought to making it more attractive to the fans and the idea of attracting new fans," Perini said. "Perhaps several of my ideas were too extreme for some, but they were always motivated in the best interests of the game." Yet, Perini's hometown simply would not respond to his baseball team, and it was that curious and fatal apathy that created the momentum toward Milwaukee. Perini saw himself as a man of vision, and men of vision did not fight momentum.
THE B BRAVES WERE welcomed to Milwaukee as saviors. In most towns, the bars and restaurants jockeyed to curry favor with the local ball club, everyone wanting to be welcomed to Milwaukee as saviors. In most towns, the bars and restaurants jockeyed to curry favor with the local ball club, everyone wanting to be the official the official establishment of the home team. Milwaukee was no different. establishment of the home team. Milwaukee was no different.
After home games, Duffy Lewis, the Braves traveling secretary, would call Ray Jackson's Barbecue and tell the bartender to put some bottles on ice-the players were coming over. Wisconsin Avenue was full of hot spots willing to cater to the team. There was Ray Jackson's, but there were also Fazio's and Frenchy's and the authentic German restaurants Mader's and Karl Ratzsch's. There was Mick Lewin's, and for the best steak in town, there was the Hotel Schroeder.
In most towns, the gratuity stopped there-a steak and a beer and a handshake. In Milwaukee, grateful to finally be big league, the red carpet extended to gasoline (Wisco 99 filled the players' tanks for free), dry cleaning, and furnishings for the wet bar, courtesy of Fred Miller.
"We got automobiles to drive.53 We got dairy products. We got free gasoline. We got free dry cleaning," Frank Torre recalled. "A case of beer a week, and a case of whiskey a month, I remember. They just fell in love with the team. I was one of the luckiest players in the world. What a unique era it was." We got dairy products. We got free gasoline. We got free dry cleaning," Frank Torre recalled. "A case of beer a week, and a case of whiskey a month, I remember. They just fell in love with the team. I was one of the luckiest players in the world. What a unique era it was."
The ballpark, County Stadium, was supposed to be a minor-league park, and except for the two-tiered grandstand that made a half-moon behind home plate, this was obvious. Down the lines, the grandstands stopped, replaced by odd single-level bleachers that would have looked more at home at a high-school football field. The light stanchions stood 115 feet in the air beyond the outfield fences, tall and alone, except for a row of fir and spruce trees in left center field planted in 1954, called, oddly enough, "Perini pines."
The best feature of County Stadium was outside of the park's grounds. On Mockingbird Hill, beyond the right-field fence, sat the National Soldiers VA Hospital. On game days, the vets could sit outside their rooms and watch the games for free.
The park offered glimpses of the future. It was big and roomy, unencumbered by the funky city blocks and angles that defined the old crackerjacks in Boston and Brooklyn. Hugging the outfield in a crescent beginning at third base and stretching to first was enough parking to satisfy an airport.
The 1953 team responded with immediate success-and magic. On opening day at County Stadium, Billy Bruton beat the Cardinals 32, with a tenth-inning home run. Mathews, all of twenty-one years old, hit 47 home runs, scored 110 runs, and drove in 135 to go with a .302 average and a second-place finish for the MVP, behind Roy Campanella. Spahn won twenty-three games, losing only seven. Primarily out of the bull pen, Burdette won fifteen games and saved eight more, while the new acquisition from Cincinnati, twenty-five-year-old Joe Adcock, drove in eighty runs. The club finished a distant second, thirteen games behind the 105-win Dodgers, but a 92-win team was something to embrace. At the gate, Perini led the league in attendance at 1.8 million fans, and the $600,000 loss he took in Boston was turned into a profit of nearly three-quarters of a million. The Boston experience did, however, erode some of Perini's vision. Once in Milwaukee, Perini retreated from his position that television promoted the game and retrenched, refusing to broadcast a significant number of games to his new and excited fan base.
He had been the first owner to move a franchise in half a century, and it worked. Every sad-sack owner in baseball, either saddled behind a more profitable club in the same city or pessimistic about the lump of mud they called home, suddenly wanted to be just like Lou Perini. That was what men of action did with momentum. They found a way to make it work for them, to cultivate it, to give the world the impression that the happenstance of the day was exactly the lucky break for which they had been searching all along.
THE M MILWAUKEE IN which Henry Aaron arrived in 1954 was still growing, though not at the rapid pace it had at the turn of the century. It was adjusting to another transition, one that occurred in the years immediately approaching and following World War II: the arrival of thousands of southern blacks during the great migration north. The postwar increase in the black population would produce for Milwaukee one of its great contradictions, for despite its reputation for tolerance, high-quality-of-life Milwaukee earned a reputation as one of the most severely segregated cities in the country. which Henry Aaron arrived in 1954 was still growing, though not at the rapid pace it had at the turn of the century. It was adjusting to another transition, one that occurred in the years immediately approaching and following World War II: the arrival of thousands of southern blacks during the great migration north. The postwar increase in the black population would produce for Milwaukee one of its great contradictions, for despite its reputation for tolerance, high-quality-of-life Milwaukee earned a reputation as one of the most severely segregated cities in the country.
Blacks were marginalized in a tight quarter of the city, nicknamed "Bronzeville," which was roughly the rectangle bordered by State Street to the south, North Avenue to the north, and Third and Twelfth streets to the east and west, respectively. The name Bronzeville was most likely a descendant of the black section of Chicago, the destination city for so many southern blacks during the great migration. Bronzeville was managed so tightly by the restrictive housing patterns and lending practices of area banks that a study undertaken by the Milwaukee Commission on Human Rights-titled The Housing of Negroes in Milwaukee, 1955 The Housing of Negroes in Milwaukee, 1955-concluded: The free choice of residence54 in the open housing market which ecologically stratifies most of our population in terms of income, education and occupation is not operative in the case of Negroes. All those restricted within the arbitrary confines of the racial ghetto must find shelter as best they can within its circumscribed bounds. The Negro middle and upper classes, regardless of their education, skills, professional accomplishments-if their skin is dark-must reside in the slum. The fact that they dislike the disorganizing and predatory features as greatly as do their white social status counterparts avails them naught. in the open housing market which ecologically stratifies most of our population in terms of income, education and occupation is not operative in the case of Negroes. All those restricted within the arbitrary confines of the racial ghetto must find shelter as best they can within its circumscribed bounds. The Negro middle and upper classes, regardless of their education, skills, professional accomplishments-if their skin is dark-must reside in the slum. The fact that they dislike the disorganizing and predatory features as greatly as do their white social status counterparts avails them naught.
Henry and Barbara, who was now pregnant, rented an apartment on Twenty-ninth Street, close to Bill Bruton and Jim Pendleton. Henry was eager to breathe the air of the big leagues-to measure his ability against the top competition in the sport, to absorb the fullness of the dream of being a major-league ballplayer-but navigating his new city outside of the ballpark was a far less attractive challenge. He had always been the boy who wanted to escape, the one most comfortable in his own private space or on the baseball diamond, not easily gregarious by nature. Thus, it wasn't with great enthusiasm that Henry went about the inevitable but important chore of wading through the idiosyncrasies of his new city, even though he was immediately taken by the nightlife there. Milwaukee was not Chicago, but when it came to hoisting a glass, it was on par with any city. "The first thing I noticed about Milwaukee,"55 Henry would say, "was the number of bars. Milwaukee was definitely a drinking town." Henry would say, "was the number of bars. Milwaukee was definitely a drinking town."
More than any other player on the Braves, it was Billy Bruton who eased Henry's transition. "If it weren't for Bill Bruton,"56 Henry would say, "I don't know if I would have made it those early years. He was like a big brother and a father to me, all at the same time. He showed me the way." Henry would say, "I don't know if I would have made it those early years. He was like a big brother and a father to me, all at the same time. He showed me the way."
Eight years older than Henry, William Haron Bruton was born November 9, 1925, in Panola, Alabama, on the outskirts of Birmingham. Unlike most of his teammates, including Henry, for whom baseball was the only destination, Bruton saw baseball as a vehicle that could provide greater opportunities and acceptance for him off of the field, opportunities not yet existing for blacks. As an adolescent, he moved to Wilmington, Delaware, with the childhood dream of becoming a chemist, but he would later say that he chose baseball because he believed that chemistry was not yet a field in which a person of color could succeed. He had not even begun to think of baseball as a career, because during his youth, the game had still been closed to black players. By the time he had been discovered playing center field for the San Francisco Cubs, a barnstorming club that toured the Midwest, Bruton was twenty-four years old, talented enough to play in the major leagues but too old to be taken seriously as a prospect by a major-league club. After the legendary scout Bill Yancey instructed Bruton to shave four years off of his age to make him more attractive to big-league clubs, the Boston Braves signed Bruton to a minor-league contract to play at Eau Claire. He was a tall and lean left-handed hitter, six feet tall but weighing barely 170 pounds, possessor of blazing speed and sharp defensive instinct. When Bruton was promoted to Denver before joining the Braves, he had been nicknamed "the Ebony Comet" by the local fans.
It was Jackie Robinson who received the attention, but Billy Bruton was one of the many unsung black players who had a special role in the integration of the game. Along with Roy White, he had integrated the Northern League two years before Henry arrived, and, like Henry, he had been welcomed into the home of Susan Hauck. Few players were as committed to challenging the conditions for black players in the game as Bill Bruton. He was as frustrated and impatient for equal opportunity as Robinson, yet he possessed interpersonal skills that made him popular with the overwhelmingly white Milwaukee fans-but not at the price of his dignity-without having to play the caricature of the disarming Negro. He did not raise his voice, or often show flashes of temper, but almost immediately after reaching the big leagues, Billy Bruton had become the de facto ambassador to Braves management for the black players of the team. He would be the first black player on the Braves to live year-round in Milwaukee, and being an older player-he was a twenty-seven-year-old rookie when he made his big-league debut in 1953-he was more mature than the younger players.
Bruton was serious and religious, and he immediately commanded the respect of his peers, even during a humiliating time. His wife, Loretta, did not attend spring-training games, because she refused to sit in segregated seating, apart from the wives of the white players. "There were beaches everywhere in Florida,57 but none where she could go with the other wives," Bruton once said. "I had to eat in the kitchens of roadside restaurants ... or wait for a Negro cab driver to come along and tell me where I could get a meal. All I could ask myself was, 'How long would I have to suffer such humiliation?'" but none where she could go with the other wives," Bruton once said. "I had to eat in the kitchens of roadside restaurants ... or wait for a Negro cab driver to come along and tell me where I could get a meal. All I could ask myself was, 'How long would I have to suffer such humiliation?'"
Bruton was the black elder of the Braves, and he had immediately taken Henry under his wing. He taught Henry important aspects of the big-league life: how to tip, which cities were particularly difficult for black players, which parts of Milwaukee were friendly and which were not. Duffy Lewis had, in effect, made Bruton his deputy when it came to dealing with the logistics of the separate life black players were required to live. Lewis made Bruton his proxy. It was Bruton who handed out meal money and, most important in spring training, learned the transportation schedules of black cabdrivers and buses, as well as restaurants, barbershops, all of the details black players needed to know, being apart from the rest of the team.