Let’s say you are the target of senseless hate and that, having survived, you are advised to simply forget about it. Let it go. Move on.
Think of Henry Aaron, the baseball Hall of Famer who died this week at 86. In 1974, when Aaron—a Black man—was about to surpass baseball folk hero Babe Ruth as the sport’s home run king, insults and death threats rained down on Aaron and his family. Racism, pure and simple.
And, once the whole troubled affair was over—once Aaron had his record 715th homer and reasonable people gave him the acclaim he deserved—there was a widely held expectation that he simply should get over what he described as “a living hell” during his pursuit of the revered Ruth standard.
Except there was the reality of the situation, months of what essentially amounted to arguments for Ruth’s white privilege.
“All those letters I received,” Aaron said during a telephone conversation 20 years after the fact. “People have said to me. ‘Why don’t you destroy them? Get rid of them?’
“I said, ‘Why should I? This is for real.’ People need to realize it could happen again. I keep those letters so that my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, will know what I went through.”
And now it’s 2021 and some arguments persist that an emphasis on healing pre-empts accountability.
During that 1994 phone interview, arranged to mark the 20th anniversary of No. 715, Aaron reminded of what was painfully obvious, that he merely had been “out there playing baseball in 1974.” Just going about his business. Not leading some insurrection, not attempting to cancel hallowed sports history. Yet he routinely was subjected to bigoted outrage.
“I need to keep those letters,” he said, “to let people know: This happened.”
Five years later, Aaron at last was feeling more appreciated and a bit immortal when his old team, the Atlanta Braves, staged a small pre-game celebration on the 25th anniversary of No. 715. I happened to be in Atlanta that April 8, assigned to cover a New York Knicks basketball game the next night, and was able to finagle a press credential to the event.
A quarter century before, Aaron had felt slighted when then-baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn skipped Aaron’s momentous game in favor of addressing some booster group in Ohio. But for the 1999 remembrance, commissioner Bud Selig was there. He had known Aaron since both were 20 years old, Aaron as a rookie for the then-Milwaukee Braves at a time when Selig’s father provided cars for Braves’ players.
Selig unveiled a new “Hank Aaron Award” to be annually presented to the best hitter in each league and Aaron declared, “This tops it all.”
Aaron was 65 then. “My grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, will forever be able to say their father had an award named in his honor,” he said. He told the large Atlanta crowd that night, “I know some of you weren’t born when I hit that home run, but I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.”
Still, he kept those letters from the early ‘70s. “Was baseball ready to accept what I did 25 years ago?” he asked during a brief chat before that ceremony. “I don’t know, but I did it. All those things were happening so quickly then. I don’t think America was ready to accept what was happening in baseball.”
His wife, Billye, compared the “overwhelming” 1999 tribute to the unsettling atmosphere around his ’74 homer. “This is joyous,” she said. “We were a little out of sorts 25 years ago. We didn’t know what would happen. It was an odd kind of feeling: What will be? This makes up for it. Yes.”
Aaron was such a dangerous hitter during his 23 Major League seasons that opposing pitchers, respecting his ability to cause them trouble, called him “Bad Henry.” (Aaron preferred being called “Henry” to “Hank,” but once admitted late in life that it was quicker to sign autographs with the shorter version.) One rival pitcher, Curt Simmons, famously said that “trying to throw a fastball past Henry Aaron is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster.”
In the end, he was more Ruthian than Ruth. But…
“If I were white,” Aaron once said of setting the home run record, “all America would be proud of me. But I’m Black.”
Now, at his death, the tributes are rolling in. But don’t forget any of the history. As he said, this happened.