What Hank Aaron and Barack Obama have in common
Thirty-five years after Hank defied threats and hate mail to break Babe Ruth’s home-run record Obama is also showing us a deeper realm of courage, resilience, and justice.
Los Angeles
Thirty-five years ago today, on a cool evening at Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, Hank Aaron shattered the most hallowed record in sports: Babe Ruth's career home run mark of 714. Yet Mr. Aaron's feat was remarkable not for its dethroning of a mythic American hero, but for its legacy of grace under fire – a legacy that would be invoked decades later in a race for the White House.
When Aaron swung at a fastball from the Dodgers' Al Downing and ran around the bases for the 715th time, he didn't feel like celebrating. "I was just glad it was over," Number 44 recalled many years later. Aaron, a black man, had just endured nearly two years of death threats, and literally tons of vicious hate mail – simply for daring to challenge the Babe.
A sampling:
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"I was just trying to play baseball," Aaron told me in 1999, the 25th anniversary of 715. But for Aaron it would never be "just" about baseball. As the threats poured in, Braves officials assigned him a 24-hour bodyguard. FBI agents watched over his daughter, Gaile, at Fisk University in Nashville, while police escorted his younger children to school in Atlanta. In a chase that should have been joyous, Hank Aaron risked his life each time he stepped into the batter's box. Few of his fans, or even teammates, knew what he was going through. "I saw a lot of loneliness," said Aaron's confidant, Dusty Baker, who played alongside him in the outfield and watched in awe as Aaron blocked out the threats to focus on his task. "When you get a strong black man, the more you mess with him, the stronger you make him."
