Hank Aaron, In Memoriam

HenryAaron, the real home run king, passed away yesterday in his sleep.  He was 86 years old. 

 

Here’s an obituary from the NY Post.

 

Hank Aaron, who endured racist death threats while chasing down and breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, and still considered by many to be baseball’s legitimate long ball king, died Friday. He was 86.

 

“Hammerin’ Hank” eclipsed Ruth’s longstanding mark with his 715th career home run on April 8, 1974, and he finished his 23-year major league career – mostly spent with the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves — with 755 total. His record stood until Barry Bonds broke it in 2007 and established the new mark of 762, although suspicions that Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs prompted some in the baseball community to advocate for an asterisk to be placed on his new mark and has kept him out of the Hall of Fame.

One of the greatest of the greats. I’m old enough to have caught a little of his career. He’s remembered for his homers but the man hit over 3700 hits. He could flat out hit. I don’t know if they can go back and calculate his exit velocity but it would be interesting to know. My memory of Aaron was not so much the homers but the solid contact every time he came up.

He was a strong man but he was not a huge man. He did it with squaring the ball and making solid contact. He never hit more than 45 homers in any given season. He was just a great hitter who was consistent. There were more pure home run hitters. He was one of the best around hitters ever, who happened to hit homers.

 

And what a decent man. Decency and gentlemanliness is the other thing that comes up when I think of Aaron.

I remember as a kid watching him break Babe Ruth’s home run record.

One last tidbit of an interesting note about Hank Aaron’s life.  In 1959 he converted to Catholicism.  Aaron met Fr. Michael Sablica when one of his twins died just after birth, and the two formed a friendship which led to Aaron’s conversion.  From an article in Aleteia, “Hank Aaron's friendship with Milwaukee Catholic priest impacted his life.” 

 

“Henry told Sablica that while he had been raised in the traditions of the southern black church, he had been intrigued about other religions and denominations,” Howard Bryant wrote in his 2010 biography of Aaron, The Last Hero. “Whether this interest was a direct by-product of Gary’s death or Lary’s struggle to survive — or merely because he saw an opportunity to increase his own religious knowledge — Henry seemed open to the teachings of Catholicism, certainly willing to expand his worldview beyond baseball and the safety and comforts of his own situation.

He was a Catholic for quite a few years, but unfortunately Aaron returned to the Southern Baptist of his upbringing.

 

Eternal Rest In Peace.