Witnessing history written by Hank Aaron

If you ever saw one of Hank Aaron’s home runs – and I was fortunate to see a couple dozen of them in person – you’ll know he didn’t hit those long, high moon-shot home runs. They were mostly crisp, efficient line drives. Nothing that threatened life and limb in the upper decks, the way the artificially inflated, steroid-era Samsons did.

My friend Tommy Hicks, in a wonderful series this week in Mobile’s Lagniappe newspaper, quoted Dusty Baker, an Aaron teammate and friend before he became well-known as a manager. “I never saw Hank Aaron hit a tape measure home run,” Baker said. “I asked him one time if he had like a gauge in his bat because we’d go to Chicago and he’d hit it in the basket on the outfield wall). We’d go to the Astrodome and he’d hit in in the front row. I remember, he used to always tell me, it’s not how far, it’s how many.”

The “how many” is the topic du jour as we ponder the late Henry Louis Aaron.

He awoke the morning of April 8, 1974 with 714 home runs, the same as Babe Ruth, for the most home runs in a major league career.

At 9:10 Eastern time that night, Aaron hit No. 715, off the Dodgers’ Al Downing.

Of those couple dozen Aaron homers I saw in person, this was the most memorable. The Braves are marking the 50^th anniversary of this historic homer on Monday, and are graciously welcoming back with free admission anyone who has proof of being among the 53,000-plus at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium on April 8, 1974. There can’t be that many of us geezers still left from that night. I suspect other fans will note our presence in the neighborhood of Truist Park by a volume of turn signals blinking nonstop, even as we progress steadily forward in traffic.

A couple of internal “wow” moments for me. First, it feels odd to realize that a newspaper career that sputtered along for nearly 40 years would have a “most memorable” sort of event so early on the journey. (I should have quit then while I was ahead, a sentiment that’d be endorsed by countless readers.) I was just a 19-year-old kid sportswriter in Chattanooga, tagging along with his sports editor and blessed with press credentials. Second, sobering to realize that very few typists on hand that night in the press box are still vertical, much less covering sports.

One of the other sportswriters that night was Mike McKenzie, then writing for The Atlanta Journal and a predecessor of mine at the late Huntsville Times. McKenzie remembered his coverage of “The Chase” as having “many fun, original anecdotes (as opposed to mass media scenes).” Another “wow” realization there, to think how the Aaron chase would have played out if ESPN had been around. My lord, we’d have all been buried under the hype like volcano victims. One McKenzie memory: Lewis Grizzard, soon to become a Southern icon as columnist, was then the Journal sports editor. His assigned reporters to stand at concourse exits, and seconds after the historic homer, they were to bolt into restrooms and other crannies to find any poor devil of a fan whose bladder had forced him to miss the homer. They found no such soul, happily.

My own memories: Godawful traffic mismanaged by Atlanta police. Cold weather. Celebrity sightings, like Sammy Davis Jr. and Pearl Bailey. The sight of those two teenage yahoos who jumped from the stands and sullied Aaron’s home run trot. (I do wonder sometimes, as I often reflect on that night, how many are original memories and how many of them were constructed after so many replays and so much reading.) Unrelated to that night specifically but inexorably tied to it, the many pinch-me occasions in future years when I was able to spend time with the great man.

Looking back, it’s almost as if the home couldn’t have not happened that night (excuse the double negative). There was just so much electricity and anticipation. It’s not like Hank was one of those players with the flair for the dramatic and would automatically deliver, but there was so much in place. I don’t remember that the stadium was exceptionally loud or raucous. It was chilly, and maybe folks were trying to keep warm. But it was like 53,000 people quietly holding onto their thoughts. It’s was not like – thank heavens – there was Twitter with everybody typing in some “is it going to happen next inning?” kind of stuff.

I do remember the home run. To backtrack to the top of this blog, and the trademark for Aaron home runs, as soon as the ball got up in the air, from my perspective it wasn’t definite that it was going out. The outfielder, Bill Buckner, was still tracking the ball, it was a relatively low liner that glided into the bullpen. I think I wrote something poetic (or hokey) for the next day’s paper that it “barely cleared the fence, lifted by the hopes of 53,000 fans.”

Perhaps that notion was further influenced by the postgame comments from Downing, this victim of fate.

“When he first hit it,” Downing said, “I didn’t think it might be going but it kept carrying, carrying.”

Fifty years later, that home run keeps carrying, carrying. It is a memory I’ve carried, a memory that carries me back to celebrate its history among other fortunate witnesses, that I hope will forever carry the legacy of a classy, gifted gentleman who wrote still another page for himself in baseball’s record book 50 years ago.