Leapfrogging the Babe

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"A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all–time baseball idol. ... And for the first time in a long time, that poker face in Aaron shows the tremendous strain and relief of what it must have been like to live with for the past several months."

Vin Scully
Dodgers broadcaster

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Jackie Robinson was long before my time.

I've heard stories about him. I've read books about him. I admire his accomplishments, and I would have to say that my generation's Jackie Robinson was Hank Aaron. They both broke barriers.

I guess few people realized it at first. When I was a child, it seemed that most people assumed Willie Mays would be the one to break Babe Ruth's career home run record. That was to be expected, I guess. Mays' major–league career began a couple of years before Aaron's, so Mays got off to an early statistical lead, but Aaron kept plodding along.

At some point, Aaron passed Mays. I don't know precisely when. But I do know that 40 years ago today, he passed the Babe, too.

Compared to some contemporary sports heroes, Aaron must seem hopelessly quaint. He never took steroids. He never resorted to bluster or bragging. In fact, my memory is that Aaron was very soft spoken. He let his accomplishments speak for themselves.

(Speaking of which, Aaron had a somewhat meager postseason record. He appeared in the World Series twice, winning it once, before he was 25. He also appeared in the National League Championship Series the first year that major league baseball was broken up into divisions. That was it.

(But he made the most of his opportunities, batting .362 and clubbing six home runs in 69 official postseason at–bats.)

I can only imagine the stress he must have been under in the offseason between the 1973 season and the 1974 season. You see, he came within one home run of tying the Babe's all–time mark in 1973, and he had to go through an entire offseason knowing that he only needed two more home runs to become the all–time home run king.

During those months, he was subjected to the most vile and hateful treatment imaginable. Threats were made against his life. Unsupported, slanderous rumors were spread about him and his family. At times, he must have wondered if it was worth it.

Jon Friedman writes in TIME that Aaron "got off easy" because he didn't have to contend with social media.

That's a debatable point, I think. It may not have been an as technologically advanced time, but, as Ben Nightengale writes in USA Today, "it was an often joyless and lonely pursuit" for Aaron.

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Still, he persevered — in spite of the threats and the glare of the public spotlight.

And on April 4, in the first game of the season, Aaron hit a three–run homer off Jack Billingham at Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium, tying Ruth. In hindsight, it is easy to presume that he was impatient to get the record chase behind him, but he did nothing in his other three at–bats that day.

The Braves were forced by the commissioner to play Aaron once more in Cincinnati; he went three for four but didn't break Ruth's record so the home run chase returned to Atlanta.

In 1974, NBC ordinarily did not broadcast a baseball game on Monday nights until summer, when the rest of the networks' schedules were in reruns, but NBC made special arrangements to televise Aaron's first home game of the season — and, hopefully, history as well.

Everything played out perfectly.

It might not have. Aaron hit only 20 home runs all year — his lowest output since his rookie season 20 years earlier — and he could have gone a couple of weeks before he hit another one. But NBC was fortunate.

Al Downing was on the mound for the Dodgers. The Braves trailed, 3–1, when Aaron came to bat in the bottom of the fourth. Third baseman Darrell Evans was on first following an error by Dodgers shortstop Bill Russell. Aaron drilled his record–setting home run and ignited a four–run inning that gave the Braves the lead — and, eventually, the win.

Aaron's parents came out to greet him at home plate as he rounded the bases. His mother held tightly to her son and refused, for the longest time, to let go. I heard later that she was afraid he would be shot; there had been threats made that he would be shot at home plate if he broke Ruth's record.

He wasn't shot, of course, but I don't think he got off easy.

It should be a much more relaxed atmosphere for Aaron at Turner Field tonight, though. A ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of his record–setting home run is planned before the start of the game. The first 45,000 fans will receive commemorative posters, and "[e]very 40th person to check–in will receive a $40 Racetrac giftcard."

And Aaron will be applauded and cheered by all tonight.

His Finest Hour

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"The only way it could have been better would have been for Henry to hit the very first pitch, the one thrown by Gerald Ford."

Red Smith
April 5, 1974

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On a sun–drenched Thursday afternoon in April 1974, Hank Aaron hit the home run that everyone had been waiting for since the last regular–season game of 1973.

It was the 714th home run of his career, pulling him even with Babe Ruth on the all–time list.

He had been one home run behind the Babe since Saturday, Sept. 29, 1973, when he hit a homer off Jerry Reuss. He went three for four the next day, the last of the '73 season, but he didn't hit the tying home run.

What is remembered the most about the next six months is that Aaron was subjected to the most bigoted series of attacks since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier a quarter of a century earlier. That is certainly true. By the time Hank Aaron and the Atlanta Braves opened the 1974 season, the hype had reached a level that was unheard–of in my then–young life but has been exceeded several times since.

What is less remembered is another controversy that surrounded the Braves' season opener. Atlanta's first three games were in Cincinnati. The Braves' front office wanted him to tie and then break the record — as everyone, even those who still hoped he would not, believed he would do — and also wanted him to sit out that three–game road series.

When the Braves left Cincinnati, they would open an 11–game home stand in Atlanta. Aaron was 40 years old, but, surely, the Braves' management reasoned, he could hit two home runs at home.

Baseball's commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, ruled that he had to play in two of the three games in Cincinnati.

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"When they said, 'Suppose the commissioner orders the Braves to play you,' he said that in that event he guessed the commissioner would have to make out Cincinnati's batting order, too. This smart–aleck line must have been fed to him for Henry isn't a smart aleck."

Red Smith

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And he did. He played on Thursday, April 4, with Vice President Gerald Ford on hand to throw out the ceremonial first pitch, and he played on Sunday.

He quickly pulled even with the Babe, hitting a home run on his first swing of the season. He went hitless when he played in the Sunday game, but he had eliminated half of the Braves' marketing ploy with his home run.

The next day, as the Braves and Reds took the day off before resuming the series on Saturday, sportswriter Red Smith wrote, "What really counts is that when Henry laid the wood on Jack Billingham's fastball, he struck a blow for the integrity of the game and for public faith in the game."

Smith observed that "there was nothing contrived about the locale or the timing of the event. ... It was witnessed by a standing–room–only crowd of 52,154 who weren't lured in by Aaron but rather by the local tradition that dictates that every ambulatory citizen of Cincinnati must attend the opening game even if he doesn't show up again all summer."

It was a great opening–day story, all right.

"The way Henry did it removed all taint of commercialism," wrote Smith. "For this day, at least, the business of baseball made way for sport."

The Race to Break Maris' Record

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There are two things I will always remember about the summer of 1998 — the worst heat wave in nearly 20 years that gripped most of the country and the duel between St. Louis' Mark McGwire and Chicago's Sammy Sosa to see who would break Roger Maris' 37–year–old single–season home run record.

(Maris, as baseball historians will tell you, broke Babe Ruth's single–season home run record in 1961, but he benefited from the fact that baseball seasons were 162 games by then, not 154 as they were in the Bambino's day. And for many, many years, Maris' record had an asterisk next to it in the record book because it was not achieved in 154 games.)

The home run chase made that summer of '98 memorable. Well, the heat wave did, too. It was the worst heat wave I've seen since 1980. But the McGwire–Sosa duel was truly riveting. If one had to stay inside because it was so miserably hot outside, watching SportsCenter for the latest update in the home run chase was worth one's time. And there was almost always a daily update.

In hindsight, one must wonder if the '98 home run chase would have happened at all if not for steroids.

In fact, McGwire did concede at the time that he used an over–the–counter substance that had been banned by, among others, the NFL — but not (at that time) major league baseball.

(McGwire was slipperier on his use of other substances.)

So my feeling is that the '98 season should have an asterisk next to it — or maybe it would be more appropriate to have a little syringe instead — in the record books.

But it doesn't, and it probably won't so 1998 will stand as the year that McGwire broke Maris' record. McGwire was eclipsed three years later by Barry Bonds, who has his own unanswered questions about steroid use, but 15 years ago today, McGwire was on his way to wrapping up the home run–hitting season of a lifetime.

("These long–ball extravaganzas were putting fans back in the seats," Greg Stejskal wrote recently in the New York Daily News, "but the cost was the integrity of the game.")

McGwire hit 70 home runs that year. No one before — and only one man since — hit that many home runs in a single season. (That year, in fact, Bonds hit slightly more than half as many home runs as McGwire.)

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That summer, I was working for a trade magazine that served the imprinted sportswear industry. Part of my job was attending trade shows in different parts of the country, and I recall attending a show in Chicago. Exhibitors at these shows were often regional representatives of licensed sports products, and major league baseball was a hot (pardon the expression) commodity in Chicago that summer.

At these shows, I would walk around the hall and sit down to interview exhibitors who caught my eye. As a former sports editor, I was particularly interested in these sports licenses. Major league baseball had a crippling strike a few years earlier, and there had been talk that baseball's popularity was on the decline.

The McGwire–Sosa home run derby was the first thing to breathe some life back into the sport. It was baseball's goose that laid the golden egg.

And the exhibitors were all too eager to talk about McGwire and Sosa — but none, that I can recall, had any interest in talking about steroids.

If they were concerned that I might quote them on the subject in one of my articles, they worried needlessly. I only asked because I'm a sports fan, and I like baseball (although not as much as I did when I was a boy).

Maris' record finally fell 15 years ago today, about three weeks before the scheduled end of the season. McGwire had broken the record in far fewer games than it took Maris — or Ruth, for that matter. That should have raised some red flags.

But, like the exhibitors I spoke to that summer, no one wanted to talk about steroids. Not the teams' management or coaches or players — or fans, for that matter. They wanted to talk about all the home runs, not the steroids that even a casual observer could conclude had made them possible.

The thought of steroids definitely crossed my mind in the summer of '98, but, as I say, I never found anyone who was interested in talking about that angle.

Perhaps now those people have learned that there is a frightful price to be paid for ignoring an approaching storm. It's like ignoring a persistent toothache, hoping it will go away. (In the words of writer Aldous Huxley, "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.")

But then I remember — that's the kind who never learn from the past.