Hank Aaron, who endured racist death threats while chasing down and breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, and still considered by many to be baseball’s legitimate long ball king, died Friday. He was 86.
“Hammerin’ Hank” eclipsed Ruth’s longstanding mark with his 715th career home run on April 8, 1974, and he finished his 23-year major league career – mostly spent with the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves — with 755 total.
His record stood until Barry Bonds broke it in 2007 and established the new mark of 762, although suspicions that Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs prompted some in the baseball community to advocate for an asterisk to be placed on his new mark and has kept him out of the Hall of Fame.
Aaron, a native of Mobile, Alabama and a staunch advocate for civil rights until his death, was elected to Cooperstown on the first ballot in 1982 with 97.8 percent of the vote, at the time the second-highest percentage (behind only Ty Cobb) in history. He became the 10th enshrined Hall of Famer to die since the start of 2020, joining Tom Seaver, Whitey Ford, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Al Kaline, Joe Morgan and Phil Niekro last year, and Tommy Lasorda and Don Sutton already in 2021.
“When I watched Henry Aaron play baseball, I knew I was watching someone special,” President Biden said in a statement. “It wasn’t just about watching a gifted athlete master his craft on the way to a Hall of Fame career as one of the greatest to ever play the game. It was that each time Henry Aaron rounded the bases, he wasn’t just chasing a record, he was helping us chase a better version of ourselves.”
Former baseball commissioner Bud Selig was a longtime friend, and said in a news release from Major League Baseball: “Aaron was beloved by his teammates and by his fans. He was a true Hall of Famer in every way. He will be missed throughout the game, and his contributions to the game and his standing in the game will never be forgotten.”
Henry Louis Aaron, born in 1934, grew up poor in Mobile before starting his baseball career by signing his first pro contract with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro League at the age of 17. In 1952 he joined the Braves, turning down an offer from the New York Giants to team in the outfield with Willie Mays, whom Aaron would be compared to throughout his career.
The 6-foot, 180-pound Aaron did not look like he’d become one of the most prolific sluggers in baseball history, and he never hit more than 47 homers (1971) in any one season. Yet his famed wrist- based swing and consistent excellence and durability resulted in 20 consecutive seasons of at least 20 home runs, including hitting 44 with 132 RBI and a .322 batting average during his lone National League MVP campaign in 1957.
Aaron also helped the Braves to a seven-game victory that year over the Yankees in the World Series, a loss the Bombers would avenge in 1958. He batted .364 with three homers during those two Fall Classics, and .357 with three homers against the Mets in the 1969 NLCS, the only postseason appearances of his career.
