Making of the Home Run King
During the winter of 1973, Atlanta Journal sports editor Lewis Grizzard had his hands full. It didn’t have anything to do with the 9 and 7 Falcons season, or the underperforming Hawks squad - despite the fact that “Pistol” Pete Maravich would finish the season second in the league in scoring. No, Lewis Grizzard was busy because Henry Louis Aaron had finished the season with a career total 713 home runs.
In the offseason between the 1973 and 1974 baseball seasons, The Atlanta Journal was inundated with so many phone calls and pieces of hate mail - including a suite of death threats - that Lewis Grizzard quietly had an obituary written for Hank Aaron, fearing that he might be murdered before Opening Day 1974, and the chance to tie Babe Ruth’s sacred home run record.
In his 19 years in the Major Leagues leading up to this moment, Hank Aaron had faced his share of full-throated discrimination - but as he crept up past Mickey Mantle and toward Babe Ruth on baseball’s all-time list, those voices grew even louder. Although he was a few decades past Jackie Robinson’s breaking the Major League color barrier, he was less than 10 years removed from LBJ’s signing of the Civil Rights Act. Challenging American traditions has always been an uphill battle, but to do so in the deep south in the still-smoldering wreckage of Jim Crow was an entirely different experience altogether.
No one got to Hank, and on April 4th, 1974 he took Cincinnati Reds pitcher Jack Billingham deep on his first swing of the season to tie Babe Ruth - a towering three-run shot over the left-field wall that left fielder Pete Rose barely bothered to chase.
So on April 8th, there was a palpable tension in Atlanta. A crowd of 53,775 - a Braves attendance record - gathered at Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium. After walking to lead off the second inning, Hank Aaron stepped into the batter’s box in the bottom of the fourth with no outs and Darrell Evans on first base. Dodgers pitcher Al Downing put the first pitch to Hank in the dirt to a chorus of boos. Henry Aaron stepped out of the box, readjusted, and took a few swings. On the second pitch of the at-bat, a chest-high fastball, Hammerin’ Hank unloaded a shot to deep left field. Dodgers left fielder Bill Buckner scrambled up the fence and stretched for the ball, nearly falling into the bullpen, where Hank Aaron’s 715th home run landed in the glove of Braves reliever Tom House.
The moment the ball left the bat, everyone watching knew that history had been made. The sellout crowd at Fulton County Stadium showered Henry Aaron with applause. Vin Scully, the Dodgers’ Hall of Fame play-by-play caller, framed the moment perfectly.
“What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the State of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the deep south...”
Hank Aaron fought ignorance and hatred for twenty years and became the all-time home run king.
It only takes a spark to start a fire. And some fires burn forever.