How Hank Aaron handled the pitches — and the situation
By Art Spander
Hank Aaron handled everything better than most of us — better than the commissioner of baseball, Bowie Kuhn; better than the sports columnist of the New York Daily News, Dick Young; better then a certain journalist from the San Francisco Chronicle, me.
We had our reasons, unusual as they might have been.
It was the opening of the 1974 major league season. Aaron had finished 1973 with 713 career home runs, one fewer than Babe Ruth’s cherished total. It was inevitable that Aaron would first tie the record, then break it. History would be his, and ours.
The years flash past, our heroes age and leave us too soon. Aaron died Friday. He was 86. “Hammerin’ Hank.” An athlete of brilliance, an individual of dignity. They tell us that you learn most about a person with how he or she deals with adversity.
Those had been a difficult few months for Aaron, the winter of ’73. He was surrounded by attention. And odium.
Baseball still was the national pastime, in fact as much as in fiction. Babe Ruth was the game’s singular legend. Perhaps no less important in a changing society, he was white.
Aaron was African-American, and some didn’t want him toppling Ruth’s record. There also were those, who as now, simply were bigots. Aaron received hate mail, threats on his life. He was shaken but resolute.
Tradition, now revised, dictated that every season would begin in Cincinnati. Writers and broadcasters — we were yet to be called media — descended on the city. So did nature.
On Friday, April 3, a day before the opening game, a tornado struck southern Ohio. I hid under a bed in the hotel. Fifty miles away in Xenia, buildings were destroyed, fatalities recorded.
Aaron played for the Braves, first in Boston, then in Milwaukee, finally in Atlanta. Braves management wanted him kept out of the lineup until the team came home, the next week.
But Kuhn, the commissioner, decreed Hank must appear in at least two of the three games at Cincinnati. Dick Young, the New York columnist who had come to cover Aaron, wanted him to play all three games and in print ripped Kuhn, the commissioner.
So many subplots. So much tension. So little drama. One pitch, one swing and Aaron drove a fast ball from Jack Billingham of the Reds into the left field seats of Riverfront Stadium.
The press box was enclosed — we used to joke it was “hermetically sealed“ — the setting surreal. No crack of the bat but a ball silently sailing out of the park and into our minds.
In time, on cue. Hank would not depart unfulfilled. Either would we dozens of journalists, some who came from as far as Europe.
Aaron played only one of the next two games in Cincy, and so he, the Braves and the press entourage went on to Atlanta, where it would be Monday night baseball, the Braves against the Dodgers.
Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, as Riverfront, was a multi-sport complex, home also to the NFL’s Falcons. Unlike hulking Riverfront in Cincinnati, a fortress, the stadium in Atlanta was more accepting — the press box open — and home run-friendly.
The outfield fence was chain link, like that at a local playground, and the relievers sat behind it in utilitarian bullpens.
It was just after 9 o’clock that Monday night, April 7, when the Dodgers’ Al Downing, who was always called “that little lefty,” pitched to Aaron. Darrell Evans was on first, and Downing was looking for a double play, What all of us looked at was a two-run shot that sent Aaron ahead of the Babe.
The bullpen guys had decided among themselves where to watch the game if not warming up. Tom House caught the ball that set the mark. While House grabbed his bit of history, two teenagers jumped from the stands to join Aaron circling the bases.
Security was different then. The post-game scene was the same, reporters jammed into the clubhouse seeking Aaron while Milo Hamilton, the Atlanta TV announcer, tried restoring a semblance of order.
The next morning, several of us drove the 150 miles down I-70 to Augusta, where the Masters would be played; the defending champion was Tommy Aaron.
You couldn’t have scripted it any better.