Introduction

As news, weather, and sports continued to flash on the television screen across the way, Henry Louis Aaron went to sleep in an easy chair in the bedroom of his Atlanta home on the night of Thursday, January 21, 2021. He drifted into eternal peace by early the next morning. Later that evening his wife-turned-widow, Billye, asked me a question that felt like a Hammerin’ Hank line drive slamming against the logical part of my mind.

Who…me? That’s what I thought. Then again, Billye’s question made sense. “Will you be one of Hank’s honorary pallbearers?” she said over the phone with the reality of Hank’s death still fresh and shocking.

Of course, I said yes.

No sports journalist understood the essence of Hank Aaron better than I, and as our years of conversations turned into one, two, and before long four decades of riveting dialogue for the ages, we grew close enough as friends for me to hang up later from Billye to rejoice more than grieve. I kept focusing on how “the Good Lord,” as Hank often used to say, gave all of us several extra innings with the greatest baseball player in history.

After all, Henry Louis Aaron almost died seven years before he did, but hardly anybody knew as much. I knew.

From the time I first spoke to Hank over the phone during the spring of 1982, when I did research at the San Francisco Examiner on a groundbreaking series called “Blacks in Baseball,” through his final days on Earth, no reporter chatted with Hank more than I. He was famously private. Even so, he was totally open whenever we huddled either in person or on the phone. We were kindred souls, and here’s why: Jackie Robinson.

We both understood Jack Roosevelt Robinson, the idol of Henry Louis Aaron and among my all-time favorite sports personalities. Since Hank and Jackie remained men of conviction despite everything—and since Hank saw the same traits in me while he provided guidance through much of my 25 years of racial turmoil inside and outside The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a lightning rod of a Black sports columnist in the Deep South—he understood the truth.

The truth was that I got it.

Courtesy: Aric Thompson/Dream Multimedia Group Inc.

I really got it regarding all things Henry Louis Aaron, the most genuine, the most courageous, and the most outspoken of the wise men who ever played games for a living at the highest level. Every once in a while, Hank would utter something like this: “For you to keep standing your ground despite all the crap you have to take with people trying to intimidate you into changing who you are as a writer or just trying to make you quit, I admire what you’re doing, Terence.”

I always would get chills. Then, I would quickly say, “Well, sir, I admire what you’re doing, too.”

We both would chuckle.

During my stay at The AJC through April 2009—and later when I became a national columnist for various Internet sites as well as a frequent commentator on national television—Hank contacted me to deliver his inner thoughts regarding just about everything, especially when he wished to communicate to the rest of the world.

Hank told me rare stories about his playing days for the Braves of Milwaukee and Atlanta and later for the Milwaukee Brewers during the final two of his 23 major league seasons in 1975 and 1976. He explained his admiration for Jackie Robinson and his fearlessness as an outspoken proponent for social justice. He ripped baseball officials regarding their treatment of African Americans both on and off the field and he hadn’t a problem challenging the attitudes of those reflecting negatively on humanity. The bottom line: Hank spoke here and there to reporters, but he saved his deepest thoughts for me on everything. Even on Barry Bonds.

Otherwise, Hank vanished from the end of the 2006 Major League Baseball season through most of the next one, when Barry raced toward breaking Hank’s record for career home runs at 755. Hank spoke to me, though, because, well, I got it. Before Barry edged close to Hank’s record, Hank bore his soul to me in unprecedented ways on his turmoil as a Black man dealing with death threats and hate mail during the 1970s. He was assaulted for racing toward passing the home run mark of 714 established by Babe Ruth, America’s most celebrated Great White Hope. Hank told me that commenting on the Barry chase to people other than myself would remind him of what he wanted to forget, which were the horrors surrounding his Ruth chase.

Beyond the Barry Bonds ordeal stirring emotions for Hank, you had his anger over those imploding numbers involving African Americans on the field, at major league headquarters, and for various teams. You had his love affair with giving, helping, and inspiring, especially youth. You had his sweet-and-sour relationship within the Braves organization as a team executive. You had his dealings with the rich and famous beyond the game. You had the side of his personality that contained levels of richness in body, mind, and soul that he rarely allowed the average person to see.

You had Hank’s affection for Jack Roosevelt Robinson, which only grew after Jackie died in October 1972.

I heard it all from Hank.

I knew it all.

So in September 2020, I thought about something I pondered often for a couple of decades, but this time the whole thing screamed inside of my head. Despite the slew of Hank Aaron books written in history and the documentaries produced, none had what I had. None had anything close.

I called Hank to see if he would do a book with me to fill in the considerable gaps that remained about his life and his philosophies, and he agreed without hesitation. Then he called back the next day, saying, “Okay, before we do anything, Terence, I need to check with my lawyer. I can’t remember for sure what the situation is, but there might be a conflict.”

The next week, I asked Hank for an update. “My lawyer is out of the country, but I’ll tell you what. Let’s go ahead and do the book and you just tell me what I need to do on my end,” Hank said before he laughed his contagious laugh, recalling how the conversation began with me telling him I had returned from a cycling trip of 35 miles on a bike trail. He thought about his nearly 87-year-old legs that once were swift enough to steal 240 bases to complement his other fancy numbers (2,297 RBIs, 6,856 total bases, and those 755 home runs). Then he said, laughing some more, “I’m proud of you for doing that because I can’t even get on a bike. I’ve got a lot of things aching and I can’t get around like I used to really. So, for this book I wouldn’t be able to fly anywhere or go anywhere to promote it.”

No worries, I told Hank, and the Triumph Books editors agreed. Then came mid-October 2020, when Hank’s lawyer, Allan Tanenbaum, apologized while saying he had to nix my book idea—at least that one. He said he joined Hank in making a gentleman’s agreement during the previous year and he said it involved presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, who Tanenbaum said wanted to do Hank’s autobiography to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Hank’s Ruth-passing 715th home run and 90th birthday. Both would come in 2024. “But,” Tanenbaum said, after he praised my relationship with and coverage of Hank through the years, “even though Douglas Brinkley would have exclusive rights to talk to Hank and to his family, that doesn’t mean you couldn’t write a book about Hank on your own.”

I could do that for several reasons:

I had enough material to make the real Hank Aaron shine more than whatever came before or whatever would come in the future, and the decision makers at Triumph Books agreed.

Several weeks later, Hank died just before the spring of 2021, and I’m not sure what that did to the Brinkley project. For mine, it did nothing. I had four decades of those Hank conversations—many of them recorded—and of my other exclusive dealings with Henry Louis Aaron.

For instance: seven years before Hank left us to join Jackie Up There, I saw up close and personal how Henry Louis Aaron was given at least a second life by “the Good Lord.” I wrote in this book about his near-death experience in detail with Hank’s insight in between regarding a bunch of Hank things.

You’ll see his wisdom.

You’ll see his foresight.

You’ll see his humor.

You’ll see his anger.

You’ll see his humanity.

You’ll see Henry Louis Aaron as you’ve never seen him before and you’ll see how his presence—combined with that of Jackie Robinson—transformed me into the definitive person to tell this story.

I spoke with Hank several times during his final couple of months, but I did my last official interview with him in early October 2020. It was for the quarterly magazine of the Baseball Hall of Fame. The following contributes to my credentials as the Jackie Robinson among journalists in mainstream media: I’m a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America and I’ve voted for Baseball Hall of Famers as a member of the organization longer than any African American in history.

As had happened in the past, I got a call from those who run the magazine to do a piece on Hank for their edition in early 2021. The theme involved home runs and social justice. I dialed Hank, and our conversation was so typical, so brilliant, so Henry Louis Aaron, talking to me as if he were only talking to me. No matter how many times we discussed old topics—particularly the ones involving the combination of Hank, baseball, and society—he rarely failed to reveal something new to me and to the world.

Such was the case during the fall of 2020 when Hank pontificated on the events leading up to April 8, 1974, to an extent that he hadn’t before. I used the least explosive parts for my Baseball Hall of Fame magazine story. What follows is mostly that full Hank interview, and it was his final one with me as the perfect lead into the rest of The Real Hank Aaron: An Intimate Look at the Life and Legacy of the Home Run King.

For the Baseball Hall of Fame magazine piece, I called 86-year-old Henry Louis Aaron at his home in southwest Atlanta on October 2, 2020, and the conversation became more than just my last official interview with Hank. This was the final time he discussed his raw emotions regarding the racial hatred he endured for a couple of years leading to Monday, April 8, 1974, at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, where he broke Ruth’s career home run record of 714.

Hank remained eternally scarred by the Chase.

He despised talking about it.

Even so, he never gave more personal details than he did on this afternoon about operating as a highly principled Black man with considerable brain, brawn, and guts, pursuing the Great White Hope. I listened in awe. During this interview the depth, in which he expressed his thoughts about those horrifying days, was unprecedented.

The Baseball Hall of Fame magazine piece was meant to be more upbeat than what Hank eventually provided. As a result, I only used a small portion of our conversation for the Cooperstown folks. I saved the rest for this book. Except for the irrelevant chitchat between Hank and me that I deleted, here’s the whole interview:

“I got a call from the Baseball Hall of Fame,” I told Hank. “And, of course, I’m a Baseball Hall of Fame voter and I do different things for them from time to time, and they’re doing a special program on home runs. They want me to do something on you and home runs, and I want to ask you some questions about that. Do you have time right now?”

“Sure. Go ahead,” he said.

“One of the things they want me to ask is [Baseball Hall of Fame officials] say you have saved all of the letters from the time you were chasing Babe Ruth in ’73 and ’74 and they want to kind of display the letters with the story I write. And I was curious. Have you saved any of those letters yourself?”

“Um, quite a few of them. I don’t know if I could go and put my hands on them right now, but I do have a few of them saved up.”

“That’s fine. [Baseball Hall of Fame officials] don’t want the letters. I was just kind of curious if you still saved them.”

“Yeah.”

“And the ones you saved, I guess you had to make a decision: the ones you would save and the ones you would throw away. Of the ones you saved, what was it that made you want to save them?”

“Oh, boy, whew, that should be an easy question. It really should be…the ones that I saved, well, I think one reason is that, if you look at life, and you say, ‘Are things any different than they were before?’ I don’t know if I’m making myself clear or what…I think that I kind of look back [at the death threats and the hate mail I received while chasing Ruth’s record] and say, ‘You know, things are the same really,’ and I kind of look back at some of the things that are happening today, and they’re just about the same as they were 10 years ago in some respect—only they just color it a little bit different. But I think things are the same, and I thought at that time out of all the things I was doing I was only playing a little game of baseball, trying to have it so people could enjoy it. Then I was looking around, and people were getting so irritated and aggravated because of the fact it was a Black man that was chasing a White man’s record that he held for a long time. And yet, that White man, and I hate to say this—Babe Ruth, please forgive me—but he played with and against some guys who didn’t have the ability to play Major League Baseball. And that was the thing that bothered me more than anything: was the fact that Ty Cobb and all the rest of these people ended up with so many stolen bases, base hits, and all of these other things yet they didn’t play against real, genuine baseball players.”

“And I understand exactly what you’re saying because I’ve written this before. My thing is everything before April 15, 1947, [when Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers] should have an asterisk behind it,” I said before we both laughed.

“Yeah, well, well, that’s true. That’s why they tried to get me on several occasions to try to do things to make fun, well, not make fun, but to do things on [Barry Bonds]. And I wasn’t going to get involved with that. I don’t know what [Bonds] had [done involving steroids]. He came from a Black family, and anything might have happened [regarding the motivations of racist folks who disliked Bonds when he was chasing and passing Hank’s career homer record of 755 in August 2007], anything could have happened.”

“That’s exactly right…and you know one of the things to me that was very interesting about you, going back to that home run thing in ’73 and ’74, for being a Black baseball fan like I was, I mean, I could realize how huge that was. To me, it was more of a civil rights thing as much as it was a baseball thing. Did you look at yourself as being more than a baseball player during that time period or did you just think strictly that I’m trying to be the best baseball player I can be?”

“No, I talked to, I talked to a number of civil rights icons. Andy [Young, the former Atlanta mayor, U.N. ambassador, and U.S. Congressman] being the main one. And they kept saying, ‘Hey, you keep doing what you’re doing and you’re doing as much as we are doing.’ They kept saying, ‘You keep hitting home runs and making things what they are now, and we are doing the things that we need to be doing by marching and doing the other things.’”

“When you and I did that CNN television show [in the spring of 2014 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Hank’s record-breaking 715th homer to surpass Ruth] the ratings were high for that thing, by the way. The CNN folks really enjoyed that,” I said before we both laughed. “I asked you this for CNN, but I’m going to ask you this for this story here. So, when you were going through that day [on April 8, 1974], the day that you actually broke the record, what was the thought process when you were running around the bases?”

“I thought it was over with, done with. I don’t have to worry about [the safety] of my teammates in the dugout. I no longer have to worry about going out to lunch with any of my teammates. And I had two players that I was particularly fond of: Dusty Baker and Ralph Garr, and they were both just young kids and they really didn’t know what was happening. Any chance they got, they were right under me. You’ve got some underhanded people in this world really, and some people that are dirty.”

“So [Baker and Garr] were sort of protecting you during that time period?”

“They weren’t protecting me. They didn’t know [how to do it without getting in trouble]. Dusty didn’t know. Dusty had gotten into two or three arguments in West Palm Beach with some White guys down there, and I got him out of a mess down there. Ralph had a little bit more intelligence [on how to handle this type of racism] because Ralph was born in the South and knew a little bit more of what was going on.”

“What about you during that time period? Did you, when you went to a southern city, like St. Louis or Cincinnati, which is kind of like a southern city, and you’re going out in Cincinnati to have something to eat or what have you during that time period…did you have anybody come up to you and swear at you and call you a racial slur? How did that go?”

“Oh, all the time. I had one guy come up to me and say, ‘Oh, yeah. You dirty SOB,’ and you’re this and that. And [then the guy] said, ‘Yeah, I know. My wife told me about [what you said about Babe Ruth] last night. How do you know [what you’re talking about?]’ And I said, ‘Well, you have to remember. Your wife probably told me last night when I was with her,’” he said before we both laughed. “And the last that I saw of him, he had a tail stuck between his legs, going up the stairs and out of the ballpark. Those are the kinds of things you don’t want to bring up and you don’t want to say, but they make you say them.”

“And I guess the obvious question would be: during that time how many times or how often did you actually fear for your life, when you thought somebody might take a shot at you or something?”

“Oh, many times, many times. I thought, Terence, I thought, I swear, I thought the safest spot was—the safest place for me rather—would be on a baseball field. Anywhere else, I thought I didn’t have a chance. I thought I was doomed.”

“Boy, and that makes it even more amazing that you were able to do what you were able to do. So when you got up there in the batter’s box, was there anything you thought about, anything but baseball in the batter’s box?”

“Never thought about anything but baseball. The Good Lord carried me in that regard really, and I say, if it hadn’t been for Him, I don’t know what I would have done. But the only thing I thought about at that time was baseball.”

“When you think back to that time you were chasing Babe Ruth, do you still get angry with that? Or do you look back with joy that you broke the record? What’s your feelings now that you look back at what happened back then?”

“I don’t think I get either way, Terence. I get disgusted, yes, because I think this [didn’t happen] to anybody else. I think about Pete Rose when he was going through his chase of Ty Cobb’s [career hits] record, and he was just having the time of his life, the time of his life. Nobody said anything; nobody did anything. He did what he wanted to do, and I couldn’t do one damn thing. I was not blessed to even go out to have lunch or dinner. If it hadn’t been for teammates of mine bringing me lunch or dinner…If we played a night game, they would bring a sandwich up to my room. [If it weren’t for my teammates,] I would have starved to death…That’s the kind of stuff that people don’t really understand…No. No, they don’t understand. And see: that’s the thing about it. They don’t understand because they never been through it and they don’t want to understand it because they’ll say right quick, ‘Oh, that never happened.’”

“Uh huh. And I guess the other obvious thing is: outside of a Ralph Garr and a Dusty Baker, did any of the White players understand what you were going through during that time period?”

“Quite a few of them did. You know, they kept to themselves mostly. The only hard thing, sad thing about it was the fact that every afternoon or every day before the game started, I, and when I say I, I’m talking about myself, had a press conference in the clubhouse and after the game was over with. And we didn’t have the New York Yankees [kind of talent] at that time. We had a bunch of guys who were just trying to win some games. We had a rough time.”

“Yeah, everything about [what you’re saying] is fascinating, and I’m telling you: some of this is good for the Baseball Hall of Fame magazine piece. But for the book, this will be even better. You’ve got a lot of deep knowledge here, to say the least.”

“Okay, Terence. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“Oh, no. Thank you.”

That was my last interview with him. He would pass away three months later.