Baseball, legend, icon, and Hall-of-Famer Hank Aaron passed away at the age of 86 on Friday according to his daughter.
Otherwise known as “Hammerin’ Hank”, Aaron’s journey to baseball immortality wasn’t an easy one having dealt with the racism and bigotry of the Jim Crow south, something that followed him during his chase of Babe Ruth’s home run record which he broke in 1974.
Hank Aaron encountered plenty of racism in his life, but nothing prepared him for the hatred and death threats he received as he chased Babe Ruth’s career home run record nearly 45 years ago.
Among the many hate-filled letters he was sent was one that he shared years later in Sports Illustrated: “You are not going to break his record established by the great Babe Ruth if I can help it. Whites are far more superior than [slur] . . . My gun is watching your every black move.’’
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Aaron kept most of the hate mail. Former Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Jim Auchmutey wrote in 1996, “The hate mail, the death threats, the racial slurs, they’re all there, boxed up like toxic waste . . . Billye Aaron has read about how her husband goes up in the attic and digs out those letters and picks at the psychic wounds he suffered as a black man threatening a white man’s legacy . . . ”
It was also during that chase Aaron was assigned a bodyguard due to the threats and hundreds of pieces of hate mail he received.
Even as a rookie with then Milwaukee in 1954, manager Charlie Grimm reportedly nicknamed Aaron “Stepin Fetchit,’’ a vaudeville comedian known as “The laziest man in the world.’’
Nonetheless, Aaron went on to to finish his career a 25 time All-Star with 755 home runs, 3,771 hits, and is still regarded as arguably the greatest hitter the game has ever had the privilege to witness.
Aaron would eventually be inducted into the Baseball Hall-of-Fame in 1982 on his first ballot acquiring 97.83 percent of the vote.