The windshield wipers were working overtime. Will it ever stop raining? That’s what I kept thinking in the back seat of the huge SUV, when I wasn’t saying to myself, regarding the driver, Will he ever stop talking?
His conversation was all about Hank Aaron, which was good. This wasn’t good: instead of Henry Louis Aaron, this was mostly the tired and aching man in the front passenger seat, trying and succeeding to remain polite with a smile or with a “thank you” or even with one of those Hank laughs, as the driver discussed the time he remembered “Mr. Aaron” doing that, heard about “Mr. Aaron” doing this, or why the driver was filled with joy to have the opportunity to talk (and talk and talk) to the greatest baseball player who ever lived.
I hung up my cell phone after I told the CNN folks we were pulling into the driveway of the golf club and were at the entrance. As I sat behind the tired and aching man inside that huge SUV with the rain still pounding, I said to myself, I just hope he doesn’t slip when I’m helping him from way up there in this vehicle to way down there into his wheelchair and with nobody helping me.
Hank is and Hank was the Home Run King, no matter what happened on August 7, 2007.
On that night Barry Bonds spent an evening in San Francisco for his Giants ripping his 756th career homer into the right-center-field bleachers at what was then AT&T Park. In doing so, Barry Lamar Bonds surpassed Henry Louis Aaron’s previous career record by one, but Hank wasn’t there.
He didn’t even watch on television. He was home. Asleep. On purpose.
Six years before Barry snatched Hank’s crown…ahem…with a little help, I discovered emphatically what I already knew, and that was the relationship between Henry Louis Aaron and Barry Lamar Bonds wasn’t complicated. It was non-existent. Just the way Hank wanted it. “They asked me to do a commercial,” Hank told me, shaking his head while sighing during the fall of 2001. His reference was to folks from Charles Schwab, the financial company whose marketing staff had an idea for an advertisement during the upcoming Super Bowl that January, but Henry Louis Aaron wasn’t into it. Not since the other guy was involved with the project.
Even when the controversy surrounding Bonds and performance-enhancing drugs in baseball kept growing as much as Barry’s ever-expanding body, Hank wasn’t against Barry Bonds, the ballplayer. Hank wasn’t a fan of Barry Bonds, the person, which made sense. If you wished to find the most extreme of personalities involving two of the all-time greatest athletes inside a given sport, this was it. This was Hank as the Pacific and Barry as the Atlantic—with the entire solar system in between.
More specifically, this was Hank and his contagious laugh always seconds away compared to Barry, who could use his brilliant smile to brighten up a room when he wanted to, but he often didn’t want to. This was Hank who preferred privacy but who nevertheless made strangers feel warm and special compared to Barry, who preferred privacy and let people know it—and sometimes rudely. This was Hank causing those around him wanting to get closer compared to Barry causing those around him wanting to stay as far away from the guy as possible.
Hank and Barry had cultural differences, too. Gigantic ones. Hank grew up as a proud Eagle Scout on the poor side of segregated Mobile, Alabama, during the 1930s and 1940s, when Southern Whites still shrugged over the Emancipation Proclamation, and his family home lacked the basics, ranging from electricity to inside plumbing. Barry was born and raised three decades later in California, where his father was Major League Baseball star Bobby Bonds, his godfather was Willie Mays, and his household was so upper middle class south of San Francisco in San Carlos that he jumped in his Trans Am to study criminology (oh, and to play baseball) for Arizona State.
While you never heard a negative syllable hurled at Hank by a teammate, here’s all you need to know about this particular Aaron-Bonds comparison and contrast: Barry’s peers for the Arizona State Sun Devils disliked him so much they voted to kick him off the team.
So, during the autumn of 2001, with Barry racing toward finishing the year for the Giants with 73 homers to break Mark McGwire’s three-year-old record for a season by three, the Charles Schwab folks called Hank to join Barry in some kind of commercial, and Hank called to tell me, “I’m not doing it. Terence. I have no desire to get involved with that really.”
Barry. It was all because of Barry.
Hank never said it this way, but he didn’t wish to tarnish his lifetime brand as a public figure—classy, friendly accommodating, merciful, polite, giving, loyal, understanding, compassionate—by associating with somebody who wasn’t close to any of those things in the minds of most.
Then, a few days later, Hank called me again. He said he was doing the commercial. “Why the change of heart?” I asked.
He laughed, saying, “They told me I could do my part without having to deal with him. We don’t even have to be in the same room.”
The commercial was a classic. It lasted 30 seconds and it ran twice (at a cost to Charles Schwab of $1.9 million each time) on February 3, 2002, when the New England Patriots slid past the St. Louis Rams for a 20–17 victory in New Orleans during Super Bowl XXXXVI. First, the commercial appeared after the coin toss with former U.S. president George H. W. Bush and Pro Football Hall of Famer Roger Staubach. Then the commercial surfaced again in the fourth quarter, when Kurt Warner tried and failed to rally his Greatest Show on Turf group past Tom Brady, who earned the first of his seven Super Bowl rings.
With Field of Dreams type music playing in the background, the commercial opened with Barry in an empty stadium, ripping shots from a pitching machine toward the heavens. Suddenly, out of nowhere, you heard Hank’s voice whispering as if he was coming from the stars of those heavens: “Barry Bonds, it’s time.”
Barry looked around for the sound and then he kept hitting.
“It’s time to walk into retirement.”
Confused, Barry glanced toward the top of the stadium. Then he returned to his typical spot from the left-handed batter’s side of the plate and he delivered a weak dribbler down the first-base line with Hank whispering afterward, “Why hang around just to hit the all-time home run record?”
With more irritation on Barry’s face, he whirled around, looked high up toward the upper deck with the music stopping, and said, “Hank, will you cut it out already?”
The next scene showed Hank alone in the stadium press box, sitting behind the microphone for the public-address system. There’s a moment of silence with only crickets chirping in the background, and Hank’s eyes darted around in search of possible witnesses before he said through another whisper into the microphone, “Hank? Hank who?”
The commercial ended with a professional-sounding ad guy saying, “Want retirement advice from somebody you can trust? At Charles Schwab you’ll get expert advice that is objective, uncomplicated, and not driven by commission. To discuss your retirement plan, call 1-8884-SCHWAB.”
The only thing more intriguing than the commercial itself was everything leading up to making it happen. During early fall of 2001, the Charles Schwab folks wanted a 2002 Super Bowl ad to equal or surpass their one of the previous year. That Super Bowl 2001 commercial featured Sarah Ferguson spoofing her divorce from Prince Andrews while speaking to a young actress playing her daughter. (“Someday when you grow up, your knight will come, and he’ll take you off to a beautiful castle, and he’ll marry you, and give you everything your heart desires forever and ever…Of course, if it doesn’t work out, you’ll need to understand the difference between a PE ratio and a dividend yield.”)
The theme of that Ferguson commercial? Instead of getting your retirement advice from a biased person, get it from the right people, as in those at Charles Schwab, as in the reason the company’s advertising folks thought of a follow-up script involving Home Run King Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds, who was still six years away from overtaking the throne but charging fast…ahem…with a little help. Nevertheless, this was when “Barry Bonds” and “performance-enhancing drugs” weren’t mentioned in nearly every other sentence about the Giants left fielder.
While Barry said yes to the commercial, Hank said no.
That was until the Charles Schwab people guaranteed Henry Louis Aaron that the two stars of the commercials could remain hemispheres, if not light years, apart when they arrived weeks later in Arlington, Texas. This was soon after the Arizona Diamondbacks spent that November interrupting the last dynasty for the New York Yankees by winning the 2001 World Series.
The filming took an entire day at The Ballpark in Arlington, the former home of the Texas Rangers. Jack Calhoun chuckled with the memory when we chatted over the phone in May 2021. For the Bonds-Aaron commercial, Calhoun was the executive vice president of advertising and brand management at Schwab and he also was in charge of making sure Mr. Aaron and Mr. Bonds weren’t close enough to lock eyes during the filming. “There was definitely [a problem],” Calhoun said, chuckling some more during our conversation, reliving his referee’s role involving Hank and Barry. “They weren’t really physically together on the shoot, and I remember [production staff members], saying, ‘Yeah, they don’t really like each other. Hank doesn’t really like Barry Bonds that much.’ And if you think about it, Hank was really way up there in the press box. They weren’t in a room together, physically standing with each other, and I remember they weren’t physically much together and I think it was partly because [Hank requested it]. I’m not the biggest baseball fan, but I remember one of the [production crew members] saying, ‘Yeah, it’s probably best that they keep their distance. They agreed to do [the commercial], so let’s just go with that.’
“It was so long ago. I don’t remember all the details, but I definitely remember walking away, saying to myself, ‘Barry Bonds is not the nicest guy.’ But Hank was so nice and so generous and so pleasant during the whole shoot, and I felt like how can Barry Bonds not like him? Again, I’m not the biggest sports fan, so I didn’t understand any of the rivalry stuff. But I was like, oh my God. How can you not like Hank Aaron?”
Hank and Barry. Barry and Hank.
That combination was about to become as much of my life as Jackie and Hank but only because Barry kept slamming home runs. He topped McGwire’s single-season record in 2001, just weeks before the great Charles Schwab commercial that almost didn’t happen. Three years later, Barry hit No. 700 on September 17. Then he passed Babe Ruth at No. 715 on May 28, 2006. Then, with the Aaron tiebreaker for Bonds slightly more than a year away by the end of 2006 and with Hank dropping more into the shadows regarding media folks not named Terence Moore, here’s what I knew: I was about to go from The Hank Aaron Whisperer to The Hank Aaron Spokesperson.
I also suspected I’d have to become Hank Aaron In Spirit on more than a few occasions in print and before cameras. That’s exactly what happened.
Once the ball dropped in New York’s Times Square on Sunday, December 31, 2006, I was destined to spend 2007 receiving voice messages, texts, and emails along these lines:
“Hey, Terence. Hope all is well. I’m [fill in the blank] and I was wondering if you can help me get in contact with Hank Aaron.”
“Hey, Terence. Hope all is well. I’m [fill in the blank] and I was wondering if you can answer a few questions about Hank Aaron.”
Hank wasn’t talking, and his self-imposed seclusion from the public in 2007 was built for Susan Bailey, his pleasantly uncooperative personal assistant of just about forever. Even before the stretch drive of Barry chasing Hank’s home run record, she was always available for a “no” to reporters seeking an audience with Hank because Hank wanted as much. Now with Hank wishing nothing to do with this Barry Bonds thing, Bailey’s “no” became “NO.”
Among Hank’s best laughs ever came whenever I’d huddle with him in 2007 to mention yet another national or local reporter contacting me to determine how to reach “Mr. Aaron” beyond Bailey (basically to see if I would call Hank on their behalf) or to discuss my thoughts as The Hank Aaron Whisperer on Hank’s thoughts regarding Barry Bonds.
Hank wasn’t talking. To anybody but to me.
There were two reasons Hank became invisible during Barry’s record-breaking year for lifetime homers. One: every time Hank discussed Barry on the verge of owning more home runs than anybody in baseball history, it returned Hank to the awfulness he experienced during the early 1970s, when he battled major league pitchers as well as racist comments and death threats while chasing Babe Ruth’s old record mark of 714 homers. Two: Hank wasn’t fond of Barry Bonds, the person (see that Charles Schwab commercial), and even if Hank was, he knew Barry’s chase of No. 756 was just a wrong word from Hank creating a media circus he didn’t need in his orderly life.
As for Barry Bonds, the player, Hank defended that Barry Bonds more often than not. He even did so after Barry’s steroid allegations exploded with the March 2006 book called Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports. Among other things, the book’s authors gave a detailed report of why they believed Barry began using steroids through jealousy over McGwire breaking Roger Maris’ single-season home run record of 61 with his 62nd blast in 1998 along the way to 70.
During the spring of 2006, I called Hank to discuss Bonds, steroids, and Game of Shadows, which claimed Barry had been playing and juicing for years.
“My take on this whole thing is—and I still say—there has been no guilt of admission from anybody, you know?” Hank said. “Until you’re proven guilty, you’re innocent, and I know that may sound kind of [naïve] because these people have gone out and done this, done that. But I just don’t, being who I am and living in this country for so long and [having seen] injustice prevail the way it has in numerous occasions, I just prefer waiting until the final verdict is in, and the final verdict is that you’ve got to put Mr. Bonds somewhere on the stand and say, ‘Hey, didn’t you or did you or did you or didn’t you?’
“That’s my take on the thing. I’ve stayed out of it because I, hell, I don’t know the answer. I just don’t know the answer. I don’t think anybody else does. I think we all sit here. We try to pretend. I read the papers and people say, ‘Well, you know, he don’t deserve [going for the home run record].’ I don’t know how you can do that. I wish somebody could tell me how you can, the man’s got 700-something odd home runs, and [because of suspicion of steroid use], you’re going to take 500 away from him, 100 home runs away from him.”
“Right,” I said.
“I just don’t know, I really don’t know in all fairness to everybody.”
“Uh huh. Do you feel sorry for Barry in a way?”
“I…I do feel sorry for anybody who’s gotten himself in this position. I don’t—as I’ve said before and I’ve told this to you many times—I don’t know Barry. I knew Barry’s father [Bobby, who played in the major leagues from 1968 to 1981, primarily with the San Francisco Giants]. I knew his father was someone that I always admired his ability to play the game. And I just met Barry, well, I’ve been knowing him for about seven or eight years but not being in his company. I’m not a buddy and pal, you know.”
“Right, right.”
“But I do feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for him and I guess I feel even sorrier for his family. His father is no longer with us, but I know what kind of person he was, and [for Barry], I’m not saying guilt or no guilt. It doesn’t really make any difference to me right now. It’s just, to me [Bobby Bonds] is dead, and he needs to be resting peacefully.”
“Let’s say if he goes forth this year, and it looks like he’s going to break Babe Ruth’s record pretty quickly. With all the shadows and with all the rumors and allegations that are out there, if he goes forth and breaks your record, do you think that puts a cloud over his accomplishment?”
“I don’t know. As I said before, Terence, I can’t answer that. I think the only person who can answer that question would be Barry, and whether he answers it or not, I don’t know. I can’t answer it. His home runs were hit the same way with a baseball bat and by somebody throwing 90 mph fastball—same as mine. I don’t know what else he used as far as to juice him up or whatever. I don’t know. That is something…he has to live with himself. So, I really can’t answer that and be fair.”
“And I guess along those same lines, you’ve said this many times before that, when that time comes with Barry or Ken Griffey or whoever, it’s not one of those type of things where it doesn’t bother you one way or the other.”
“No. I’m not. Even when I broke Babe Ruth’s record, when I went through so much crap, records are made to be broken. That’s just the end of it. You make records, and people try to break them. You make records, and somebody can come along and break that record. No matter whether it’s Barry, McGwire, or anybody else. Records are going to be broken.”
“And it doesn’t matter or not to you if it’s done in a tainted way?”
“See, I have no, I can’t…to me…to be honest with you, I can’t sit here and say anything about being tainted. I don’t know enough about it. I can’t say that is tainted because Barry hasn’t said anything other than what people have accused him off.”
“Yeah, that’s a very good point.”
“Yeah, so I don’t know and I’m not going to be the one to sit back here and be the one to point a finger at anybody to say, ‘You done this or you done that.’ I think I’d be as wrong as hell to do that really. I just got to let Barry do his own thing. If he did anything wrong, he’s the one who is going to have to pay for it. Whatever. I’m out of it.”
“Which I think is the appropriate way to proceed.”
“I just can’t. No matter what happens, whether or not Barry hits 756 home runs, 757, 800, 900, whatever it is, mine, 755 is going to be there next year and the year after that,” he said, causing us both to laugh. “It ain’t going no further. I’m not going to hit another home run. My home run days are over with.”
Later, during that same conversation in March 2006, Hank foreshadowed his hermit ways to come the following year, when half the world turned toward Barry getting close to baseball’s all-time home run record, and the other half searched for a reaction from Henry Louis Aaron. “I was telling somebody today that it has gotten so now that they don’t even want me to come to court to even to participate in trials anymore. You get to be a certain age, and they say, ‘See ya later,’” Hank said, laughing, tying the end of his jury selection days to Barry’s chase, which reminded him of his own chase, which was the worst time of his life. “So, I don’t worry about any of that [regarding Bonds]. I’m happy. My life is really good. I’m happy with it and I don’t have to go through that anymore. I went through chasing Babe Ruth’s record for…it was enough for me for two-and-a-half years, and God knows I had my fill of it. I really had a lot…of good things and I had a lot of bad things.”
That meant Hank wanted nothing to do with Barry Bonds things in 2007, which made me quite popular. I was everywhere: CNN, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, PBS. In addition, any Atlanta station owning a TV camera asked for my Hank comments, along with national and local radio. Most prominently, I talked Hank Aaron often during my gig as a regular panelist on Rome Is Burning, Jim Rome’s ESPN show, and I’d frequently appear as The Hank Aaron Whisperer somewhere on one of ESPN’s slew of other entities two or more times per day.
As the baseball gods would have it, the Giants of Barry Bonds played hosts to the 2007 All-Star Game on July 10 in San Francisco, and the day after the American League’s 5–4 victory, I was the only non-ESPN employee or non-Major League Baseball player used for the cable network’s lengthy feature on Aaron’s legacy while Bonds streaked through the first half of the season toward breaking Hank’s career home run record. “Hank Aaron is not going to be diminished,” I said, during one of the several times I was used in the piece. “He is going to be as big as he was before, even bigger, simply because people are going to see him against a very controversial figure, whereas Hank Aaron was a very beloved figure, and in a way, it’s going to strengthen his legacy even more.”
A few days later, I was on ESPN’s Outside the Lines, and host Jeremy Schaap asked me, “As well as you know Aaron, Terence, what do you think of his decision not to be there when his record is broken by Barry Bonds?”
“I’ll tell you. I think this is absolutely perfect,” I said. “If he had a long-standing relationship with Barry Bonds, which he does not, if they were very close, which they are not, then you could say he should be there. Willie Mays is his godfather. It makes perfect sense for Willie Mays to be there, and it does not make perfect sense for Hank Aaron to be there except that people are making this to be a bigger deal than it should be.”
Besides my TV and radio stints as The Hank Aaron Whisperer, I also was everywhere through the written word. Whenever I searched “Hank Aaron” and “Terence Moore” during much of 2007, I found something from one of my columns for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (often the whole piece) or from one of my television interviews. Those searches produced that Aaron-Moore combination, stretching from The New York Times to the London papers (both in England and Ohio) and even to the South Bend Tribune, which pleased all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins who dominated that small Indiana city of my birth and youth.
Sports Illustrated was the pinnacle of sports print media at that time, and the magazine displayed that Moore-Aaron combination. In late July 2007, I got a call from SI staff writer Tom Verducci who did the magazine’s cover story called “The People’s King.” It read: “Henry Aaron is about to be displaced from his spot atop the all-time home run list, but 755 will endure as one of baseball’s magic numbers, a lasting monument to an underappreciated star and to the courage and integrity with which the Hammer attained his crown.”
Hank wouldn’t talk to Sports Illustrated because Hank would only talk to me. So, Verducci used me as The Hank Aaron Whisperer, The Hank Spokesperson, and Hank Aaron in Spirit as a substitute. Verducci’s article included this passage: “‘Hank is genuinely a soft-spoken, private guy, and he truly doesn’t want to relive 1972, ’73, and ’74,’” says Terence Moore, a columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and an Aaron confidant. [Aaron has declined all interview requests, including several from SI, on the subject of the home run chase.] ‘Those are bad memories for him. With Barry Bonds going through the chase, it’s like it’s putting him back in that era. And he doesn’t want to go back there.’”
Through it all—my endless Henry Louis Aaron-related appearances on national and local television shows; my interviews with radio stations, newspapers, and magazines, including the one for Sports Illustrated—Hank and I kept in touch with phone calls coming and going both ways.
He loved it. “I see you, Terence,” Hank often said, chuckling on the other end. “You’re doing a great job really. I don’t want anything to do with any of it, but if you need something from me, I’m here.”
Hank kept his promise to me, and I appreciated it. But never once did I take for granted that Henry Louis Aaron designated me as the only media person on the planet to know what he was thinking at all times, while Barry slugged and sulked his way toward the home run crown. Sometimes, I wanted to call Hank about something I contemplated writing for The AJC about Barry’s home run chase, but I would move away from the phone, even though I knew Hank wouldn’t mind whatever it was. I only dialed Hank for the big stuff involving Barry or I waited for Hank to call me about his thoughts of the moment, which happened often in 2007.
The whole Barry thing was bizarre. It was this bizarre: after Barry did the inevitable by breaking Hank’s career home run mark with No. 756 in San Francisco on August 7, 2007, he slowly became a national afterthought. He was 43, but he finished the 2007 season with good numbers for the average baseball player. He hit 28 home runs. He batted .276 with 66 RBIs and he led the major leagues in walks with 132. He also retained the ability to rip pitches beyond the farthest fence…ahem…with a little help, which was part of the problem.
Even so, despite Barry’s 762 homers overall and seven National League Most Valuable Player awards, his career was done. Nobody wanted to sign the new home run champion after the 2007 season—not the Giants, not anybody. Not since he was tagged as the guy who had more than a little help at the plate through performance-enhancing drugs and he also owned the reputation for alienating folks.
In one of life’s great ironies, I could have been The Barry Bonds Whisperer under different circumstances. I was The Hank Aaron Whisperer though. That reality, along with what could have made me The Barry Bonds Whisperer, created an interesting situation on Thursday, April 6, 2006, inside the Giants home clubhouse at AT&T Park in San Francisco. Across the way, there were members of the always sizeable Giants media contingent watching in amazement (including the Giants beat writer who once called me the N-word) as Barry waved me over to his famously private corner. He wanted a one-on-one chat and he wanted to make sure no other ears were listening.
This wasn’t unusual. Barry and I had long and deep talks from the time he made his Major League Baseball debut with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1986 through his only season in 2016 as a batting coach for the Miami Marlins. As for the latter, that’s when he confessed to me for a Sportsonearth.com column that went viral. No, he didn’t come clean about steroids but about his personality. In a lengthy session from the visitor’s clubhouse at Sun Trust Park in Atlanta, he said he spent much of his baseball career fluctuating between a “jerk” and a “dumbass.” He said he wanted to apologize and he said he wished to spread the message through me, which sounded like what I had been doing for decades with the guy with 755 home runs to his 762.
I got along as well with Barry Lamar Bonds as any reporter in history—and probably better than that. Except for Sunday, April 13, 1997.
The truth is this burst of Barry pettiness was his fault in the short run, but it was mine for making it a medium-run thing. Back then Major League Baseball prepared to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the game’s color barrier in a huge way on Tuesday, April 15 in New York City. Perfect. The Los Angeles Dodgers were coming to town. That was Jackie’s old franchise when it resided in Brooklyn, located maybe a 45-minute subway ride from Shea Stadium, where the modern-day Dodgers would meet the New York Mets. Before a huge group of dignitaries led by president Bill Clinton and Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s widow, baseball used the occasion to retire Jackie’s No. 42 forever.
I flew to New York a couple of days early on purpose. The Giants were around that weekend to play the Mets. I figured I could spend time before Sunday’s game talking Jackie Robinson with two of my favorite African Americans in the game for insight: Giants manager Dusty Baker, a former teammate of Hank’s on the Braves and one of the game’s all-time renaissance men, and Bonds, who always gave me thoughtful answers on everything and anything. I often defended Barry before others, saying the truth: once you got to know Barry, he was quite cerebral.
My plan worked perfectly.
Well, at least the Baker portion in the visiting manager’s office at Shea Stadium, where he was his typically superb self. He told personal stories regarding Jackie’s legacy, especially since Baker spent the prime of his playing career as a Dodgers outfielder for eight seasons through 1983. Then I was off to seek Barry in the visiting clubhouse, which was ridiculously small and cramped, and Barry’s locker was on the far wall as soon as you walked through the door. As I entered, I began moving toward Barry, and when he looked up from the distance while sitting at his locker, he didn’t do what he usually had done for nearly the decade of our interactions.
He didn’t flash his brilliant smile.
He frowned instead and he went further. As I continued to walk his way—with teammates, Giants officials, other clubhouse folks, and fellow reporters squeezed into the tight quarters—Barry rose from his seat to shout obscenities around his dominant message of the moment: “Okay, I don’t want to talk about Jackie Robinson! Don’t come over here talking to me about Jackie Robinson! I’m tired of talking about Jackie Robinson!”
The closer I got to Barry, the more he repeated his mantra (“I don’t want to talk about Jackie Robinson”) but only in softer terms. By the time I reached him, he gave me another “I’m not talking about Jackie Robinson” before he said just above a whisper, “T, we can talk about anything else, but I’m tired of talking about Jackie Robinson.”
Whatever, dude.
At that point with Barry’s mostly contrived tirade threatening to place the both of us on the back pages of the New York tabloids, I was fuming. I told him in a slightly loud voice, “Thanks, sir,” as I turned and left the clubhouse. I didn’t need Barry Lamar Bonds or anybody else that badly.
He never apologized, but during Baseball All-Star Game events and his trips to Atlanta with the Giants, he tried to ease the tension over the next couple of seasons. I wasn’t having it. I finally came to the conclusion that I might as well drop my anger over SheaGate because it was what it was and it was Barry being Barry.
It was just the first (and only) time it happened to me.
That brings me back to Thursday, April 6, 2006, when Barry and I were nearly back to our normal relationship. I traveled to San Francisco to write columns for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the Braves’ West Coast road trip at the start of that season. I entered the Giants home clubhouse at AT&T Park, which was famous (or maybe infamous) for Barry’s World in a far corner. Barry Lamar Bonds had four adjoining lockers, including the largest one in the room, and with the help of a huge TV set and a vibrating reclining chair, he was able to control who entered Barry’s World.
Visitors to Barry’s World almost never included reporters—among his least favorite people on Earth. Still, as was the case on this day, that typically large core of media covering the Giants always gathered before games in the middle of the AT&T home clubhouse. The reporters waited for the player or the coach they needed for an interview at that moment or they wondered if Bonds would do the improbable by inviting them into Barry’s World for a chat.
Barry did the improbable on Thursday, April 6, 2006, but it didn’t involve anybody covering the Giants. As soon as he glanced up from his recliner to see me walking into the Giants clubhouse, he said, “Hey, T” and then he waved me through the invisible attack dogs. He flashed his brilliant smile, both of us exchanged pleasantries, and I could sense the Giants press corps joined everybody else around the room in wondering, Why isn’t Barry being Barry, and he’s being kind to a reporter?
I knew Barry Lamar Bonds, the whole one.
Even though Barry could become King of the Jerks within seconds, which was something he tried to address during my 2016 interview with him, he was extremely sensitive. He cared more about his public image than you would think. As I once wrote for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “You probably don’t know that the rugged exterior that Bonds often shows is a fraud…Bonds just wants to be loved. He really does.”
So, this wasn’t surprising: about a couple of minutes into our conversation in the middle of Barry’s World, Barry’s brilliant smile left, and the dominant thing on his face were sad eyes. Then he said, “I’ve followed what you’ve been writing about me and I see you on television all the time. As a Black man to another Black man, if I were on the other side of things, I would be more supportive of you than you have been of me.”
Barry stared at me in silence with those sad eyes. Instead of thinking about his slow start at the plate that season, he was recalling how I was spending the middle part of his chase of Hank’s home run record saying—through print, cyberspace, or the airways—that Barry Lamar Bonds wasn’t Henry Louis Aaron in character. I told Barry I had issues with the reports connecting his power surge to performance-enhancing drugs, but Barry never responded to my response. He just kept those sad eyes and he moved to another topic.
Actually, it was the same one but in a different way. “Let me ask you this: why doesn’t Hank ever call me and why won’t he even try to get in touch with me?” Barry said, knowing that I was The Hank Aaron Whisperer. He added, raising his arms in despair, “I never hear from Hank. So when is he going to give me a call?”
I asked Barry why Hank needed to contact him? “You just think he would,” Barry said before I mentioned Henry Louis Aaron had zero obligation to call Barry Lamar Bonds or anybody else.
Then I added, “If you want to talk to Hank, you should call him. If you need his telephone number, I’ll give it to you.”
Barry nodded with those sad eyes, but he never asked for Hank’s number, and the conversation jumped to something else.
When I told Hank about my Barry conversation, he laughed, but he didn’t want to respond to Barry’s comments. Not then. Hank did give his thoughts almost a year later to the day, and they came in early April 2007 when Barry was just four months shy of the career home run record. Hank called me to say he’d just gotten off the phone with Bud Selig, the baseball commissioner and Hank’s old pal from his Milwaukee Braves days. Barry was asking Selig and others why Hank wasn’t corresponding with him. Sound familiar?
Hank had enough. He wanted me to put his response to Barry’s plea for Henry Louis Aaron in newsprint because Hank knew it would spin around the globe and right into Barry’s ears, which it did.
Here’s what Hank said and what I wrote for The AJC: “I’m sorry Barry feels that way and I don’t have any resentment toward him whatsoever, but I have no intention of trying to get in contact with him or doing anything with him in regard to his chasing the record. Nothing. Why should I? It’s really not a big concern of mine. I don’t know why I should have to do anything. I might send a telegram, and that would be the extent of it. The commissioner told me that [Bonds] has asked him several times about why I haven’t contacted him. I don’t talk to anybody really and I’ve never talked to Barry outside of that commercial we did together a few years ago and a few other short times. I’m 72 years old and I’m not hopping on a plane and flying all the way to San Francisco for anybody.”
“Would you like to be around when Barry breaks the record, you know, if you just happened to be in the vicinity,” I asked Hank.
“Uh-uh. No, no. I’m not going to be around. I’d probably fly to West Palm Beach to play golf. Again, it has nothing to do with anybody, other than I had enough of it. I don’t want to be around that sort of thing anymore. I just want to be at peace with myself. I don’t want to answer questions. It’s going to be a no-win situation for me anyway. If I go, people are going to say, ‘Well, he went because of this.’ If I don’t go, they’ll say whatever. I’ll just let them make their own minds up.”
Then came Tuesday, August 7, 2007, in San Francisco. None of the 43,154 folks packed inside AT&T Park was named Bud Selig or Hank Aaron, but the atmosphere remained electric. In the fifth inning of what would become an 8–6 loss for the Giants against the Washington Nationals, Barry ripped a 3–2 pitch from Mike Bacsik before Barry raised his hands with joy during the typically cool northern California night as the ball sailed into the bleachers beyond the wall in right-center field. Only the screaming throughout the stands was louder than the fireworks around the ballpark.
The grandest moment of this moment was coming.
No, it wasn’t the way Barry pointed to the sky with both arms as a salute to Bobby Bonds, his father who died just shy of four years earlier on August 23, 2003. No, it wasn’t all of those relatives who joined Barry on the field to show the gentler side of a guy who rarely displayed compassion in public. No, it wasn’t Willie Mays, his 76-year-old godfather and the eternal baseball icon, joining Barry and the others throughout the 10-minute celebration. It was the AT&T Park public-address announcer telling the crowd to view the jumbo screen beyond the bleachers.
Suddenly, as the hushes throughout the ballpark became gasps and then cheers and then roars, there was Henry Louis Aaron, bigger than life, preparing to deliver a message to Barry though a pre-recorded video. For some perspective, Hank told me Bud Selig talked him into doing it. “He figured that this would be the best way to handle the Barry Bonds thing, and I agreed,” Hank said. “Just make one statement and then be done with it.”
Here was the statement: “I would like to offer my congratulations to Barry Bonds on becoming baseball’s career home run leader. It is a great accomplishment, which required skill, longevity, and determination. Throughout the past century, the home run has held a special place in baseball, and I have been privileged to hold this record for 33 of those years. I move over now and offer my best wishes to Barry and his family on this historical achievement. My hope today, as it was on that April evening in 1974, is that the achievement of this record will inspire others to chase their own dreams.”
Through misty eyes Barry pointed at the image of Hank on screen in appreciation, and Barry Lamar Bonds told reporters later of the tribute from Henry Louis Aaron: “It meant everything. It meant absolutely everything. We all have a lot of respect for him—from everyone in the game. Right now, everything’s just hitting me so fast. I’m lost for words again. It was absolutely the best, absolutely the best.”
While all of that was happening in San Francisco, Hank was back in his southwest Atlanta home, looking at nothing but the back of his eyelids with a fluffy pillow holding his famous head. “Well, first of all, I was asleep. It was 1:00 in the morning,” Aaron said, laughing a few days later, giving me his first public comments about Barry as baseball’s new home run king. “Heck, I’m not going to sit up and watch a baseball game. It’s just like I wasn’t going to be able to travel all over the world to watch [Bonds trying to break the record]. It wasn’t being disrespectful or anything. It’s just a matter of, hey, the body needed to go to sleep.”
I had a final question for the moment about the other guy. I asked Hank if he ever would call or meet with Barry for whatever reason. “Eventually, if I happen to see him somewhere, I’d probably say something to him,” Hank said. “To be honest, I’m as happy for him as anybody really.”