Hank Aaron

Henry Louis Aaron hit 755 home runs over 23 major league seasons, and the way he did it made the total easy to underestimate. He never hit 50 in a year. His single-season high was 47, reached twice. He simply hit between 24 and 47 home runs every year for two decades, accumulating the record through consistency so relentless it looked routine. Aaron's swing was compact and quick, powered by wrists so fast that pitchers described the ball leaving the bat before they realized it had been hit.

Mobile to Milwaukee

Aaron grew up in Mobile, Alabama, the third of eight children. He played for the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro Leagues in 1952 before the Boston Braves purchased his contract. He cross-handed his batting grip until a minor league coach corrected it, and within two years he was in the majors. The Braves moved to Milwaukee before the 1954 season, and Aaron was their right fielder on Opening Day, age 20.

He hit .280 with 13 home runs as a rookie. By 1955, he was an All-Star. By 1957, he was the National League's Most Valuable Player, hitting .322 with 44 home runs and 132 RBI as the Braves beat the Yankees in a seven-game World Series. Aaron hit .393 in that Series with three home runs. The Braves returned to the Series in 1958 but lost to the Yankees in a rematch.

The Pursuit of 714

Aaron spent the late 1960s and early 1970s climbing toward Babe Ruth's career home run record of 714. The pursuit should have been a celebration. Instead, it was shadowed by a torrent of racist hate mail. Aaron received an estimated 930,000 letters during the pursuit, many of them threatening his life. The Braves hired bodyguards. Aaron kept the letters, filling garbage bags that he stored for years as evidence of what the chase had exposed.

On April 8, 1974, in front of 53,775 people at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, Aaron hit a fastball from Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers over the left-field fence for home run number 715. Two fans ran onto the field and jogged alongside him between second and third base. His mother was waiting at home plate. Vin Scully, on the national broadcast, let the crowd noise carry the moment for 40 seconds before speaking. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn was not in attendance, an absence widely interpreted as a deliberate slight.

Consistency as Greatness

Aaron's career statistics reveal an almost mechanical excellence. He was a 25-time All-Star, a figure inflated by the era's two-All-Star-Games-per-year format but still representative of his sustained dominance. He won two batting titles, three Gold Gloves, and four RBI crowns. He holds the all-time record for RBI with 2,297 and for total bases with 6,856, a record that may never be broken. His career OPS+ of 155 puts him in the company of Ruth, Williams, and Mays.

He was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers before the 1975 season, returning to the city where he had become a star, and played two final seasons as a designated hitter. He retired after 1976 with the record intact.

After the Game

Aaron spent decades as a senior vice president of the Atlanta Braves and an advocate for increasing minority representation in baseball's front offices. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1982 with 97.8% of the vote. He remained a quiet, dignified presence in the sport, occasionally reminding the public that the hate mail had never fully stopped and that progress was slower than most people wanted to believe.

He died on January 22, 2021, in Atlanta, at age 86. Barry Bonds surpassed 755 in 2007, a record clouded by the steroids era, and many fans continued to regard Aaron as the legitimate home run king. Aaron himself rarely weighed in publicly on the debate. He had already said what needed saying with the swing.