The More Complete Henry Aaron Narrative

Since I wrote two short posts last Friday, the day Henry Aaron died, I was obsessed with learning more about him. I listened to the commentaries by many people, including Howard Bryant, who wrote what appears to be a definitive biography The Last Hero. I watched video interviews over a time period ranging from 1977 to 2019. This is what I learned.

He and most black ballplayers who started in professional baseball after Jackie Robinson broke the color line had a very difficult time.

Most Americans stopped thinking about the virulent racism in Major League baseball after Jackie Robinson and other black players began playing in the Major Leagues. Bryant's book and many interviews injected a sobering contrary reality to this narrative. Not only did black players suffer from continuing segregation and racial harassment in the communities in which they were raised, but they were humiliated in having to endure separate housing in Florida spring training communities and in the cities in which they played on the road. Aaron played for Jacksonville in what was popularly called the "Sally League." He overcame many obstacles to zone out what he had to address before he arrived at the ballpark and after he left it each day.

Major League teams had two black players or one black and one Latino player rooming together because they were not comfortable combining a white and black player in a shared room on the road. The black players were isolated in very difficult situations and did not get the benefit of the informal coaching and peer support that other players did.

Although the movie 42 presented a vivid characterization of white players on both the Dodgers and opposing teams as racists, black players knew that the deeper problem they confronted was that many marginal white players knew that their jobs were at risk and that they would be humiliated when they returned to their home communities and had to acknowledge that black players had beaten them out. The hostility was not solely the simple problem of deep racism, but, additionally, the more complex pitting of some players against others in a battle for survival.

Bryant's book did a superb job presenting the stress that these racial issues placed on players' wives and children. Wives had to sit in separate parts of the stadiums during spring training and to deal with inferior, segregated schools for their children. Henry Aaron's first wife, Barbara, experienced a crushing amount of stress in this regard.

Both interviews and the Bryant book described the sports writers as individuals who did not understand black players and used simplistic and demeaning stereotypes to describe them. Their standard narrative was that these players had great talent, but did not work hard and were not very smart. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Those characterizations had the effect of preventing black players from being considered as candidates for coaching, managerial and general management positions after they retired.

Henry Aaron played a significant role in rebranding Atlanta as a city of tolerance and sophistication.

Atlanta was a city not far removed from the most virulent racism that permeated the entire Deep South area. When the Braves relocated from Milwaukee to Atlanta in 1965, Aaron worked hard to integrate himself into that community. That effort did not help him get a celebratory exit when he finished his career with the Braves in 1974, but it built the foundation for the deep and mutually beneficial relationship he had with the Braves during and after the Ted Turner era. He eventually joined the Braves front office at Turner's invitation and stayed affiliated with the Braves right up to the time of his death.

The most interesting commentary about him in the book and in multiple video interviews was his relationship with the accomplishment of both breaking Babe Ruth's career home run record and the issue of Barry Bonds' pursuit of Aaron's career record.

Henry Aaron faced the issue of the career home run record at two different times. He received a great deal of hate mail prior to breaking Babe Ruth's record in April, 1974. (He kept many of the hate letters to share them with his children and remind them that racial equity and tolerance was a long way away. He also commented late in life that became friends with the FBI agents who had to open the letters to make sure none contained letter bombs.) He then was in the uncomfortable position of having to taking a position on Barry Bonds' tainted pursuit of his record. Both were stressful, but in different ways.

The story about Aaron's receipt of hate mail and the stress it placed on him, his wife and his children is well known. Less well understood was that he did not want to be defined by a single accomplishment. In fact, Bryant commented that there were two individuals in one person: "Hank Aaron," the great baseball player and home run champion, and "Henry Aaron," a thoughtful, complex individual who wanted to focus on civil rights issues, be a role model for younger players, and be a catalyst for building careers and opportunities for promising black players.

When Ted Turner gave him an opportunity to define the ideal job he would want in the Braves' organization, Aaron defined a position which gave him significant control over the farm system and the development of young players. That was "Henry Aaron." Along side this person was a quiet man who tentatively embraced his career success and celebrity status as "Hank Aaron."

As a business person, Aaron became successful after a devastating financial reverse.

Henry Aaron had been victimized by a financial advisor who cost him the entirety of his life savings in the early 1970's while he was playing with the Atlanta Braves. He managed to summon the will to start over and build up wealth for his post-playing days. Recovering from this kind of adversity and staying focused on the job in front of him is itself a remarkable and unusual accomplishment.

After he retired as a player, Aaron looked to Magic Johnson as a model for not only owning individual businesses, but demanding and providing business opportunities for minority business owners. He was hands-on and saw his business investments as a way of advancing civil and economic rights. He built up a BMW dealership from scratch, located it in Union City, which had a majority black population, was very successful and expanded into restaurant franchises. He showed that a very bright, highly disciplined black athlete could apply his skills and life habits to succeed in multiple business markets.

His accomplishments in civil rights were subtle, but impactful.

Henry Aaron was honored and loved in his lifetime and at the time of his death as a person who accomplished a great deal for civil rights. As a player, his accomplishments were not as visible and vivid as those of Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Frank Robinson or Mickey Mantle, but his quiet, understated successes over 23 years put him above all of them in career statistics.

Similarly, he did not succeed in advancing civil rights as dramatically as a Jackie Robinson, a Jim Brown, or a Bill Russell, but his cumulative accomplishments as a mentor to black players, as a spokesperson for many causes, and as a business person and community leader are under-appreciated.

When President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, one of his cabinet members said "Now he belongs to the ages," a quote repeated by President Obama at the time of Nelson Mandela's death. The article identified below made this comment about the meaning of the statement:

"When extraordinary, transformative leaders perish, we construct rhetoric to ensure that their life legacies transcend the small time period in which they lived. Our language forges great leadership in eternity."

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137472038_10

I hope we can construct rhetoric and take actions that insure that Henry Aaron's legacy survives well beyond his lifetime, because he "now belongs to the ages."