The Last Hero

by Howard Bryant

  ON MAY 8, the Milwaukee cleanup hitter, Henry Aaron, went zero for four, struck out twice, and made an error in a 5–0 win against Pittsburgh. His average dropped to .167. He’d started the season with three hits in his first seven at bats, including demoralizing the Cubs with a home run on opening day, but over the next nine games, Henry could do next to nothing. The average wasn’t there, and neither was the power. He went thirteen games before hitting his first double of the season. He had three home runs up to that point. The consolation was that Milwaukee was in first place without its cleanup hitter doing anything at all.

  The trouble with Henry was that there were few signals his teammates could point to that suggested his problems were over. Some slumping hitters got themselves out of the dumps by taking more pitches, by walking more and cutting down on their strike-outs. Not Henry. A low number of strike-outs would always be a central source of pride for him, and even when he was cranking, he didn’t walk. On May 15, he went one for four in Philadelphia, raising his average to .208, but he had struck out five times and walked five times all season. Others would try to take the ball the other way, to shoot the ball into the right-center gap. That meant the hitter wasn’t overanxious to pull the ball, which meant he wasn’t trying to meet the ball too quickly and thus was missing good pitches.

  The hitting coaches would all tell Henry the same thing: to stay back, wait on the ball, and then stride toward it. Henry hit differently. Since the ankle injury in high school, his hitting approach was to balance and drive off of his front foot, to use the combination of his quickness and power to drive the ball. Despite the results, few of his coaches knew exactly what to do with him, because they’d never seen anyone hit like that and be successful over the long term. Committing to the front foot should have left him vulnerable to late-moving pitches, made him susceptible to strike-outs, but he was just different.

  Henry’s gifts at the plate were unpredictable except in their roots. He thought along with the pitcher and tried to beat him to the spot. It had been that way in Mobile, when Ed Scott first saw him. Henry had always banked on his ability to make contact with any pitch, in any location.

  When he did catch—a three-hit game with a triple in a 2–1 loss in Philly—it was without warning, an innocent spark turned wildfire. The next day, in the Polo Grounds against the Giants, Henry rapped two more hits, a double and a two-run triple, to put on a show with Mays, who would also double and triple, just to keep the universe in balance. Then it was time to break out the adding machine: three straight multihit games against Pittsburgh and Brooklyn. By the end of the month, Aaron was suddenly hitting .352.

  If Charlie Grimm knew Aaron had the potential to be a transcendent talent, it was Haney who worked unsentimentally to refine him. When Grimm resigned, Aaron was hitting .313. Indeed, in Haney’s first game, Henry went three for four, and Haney presented him with a reward: early batting practice when the team arrived in Pittsburgh. Henry responded that night with two more hits.

  Meanwhile, the hype machine had found its man, and it was true: twenty-year-old Frank Robinson was indeed the real deal. At the all-star break, he was running away with the Rookie of the Year award, and for all of his blustery spring-training oratory, maybe Robinson’s old minor-league manager Ernie White had underestimated his former protégé. Robinson wasn’t just killing the ball; he was second in the league in hitting. He wasn’t just hitting the ball over the fence; he led the league in runs scored, even though he was not a base stealer. Like Aaron and Mays and Banks, he was a complete hitter, and that other rumor about Robinson was also true: You couldn’t intimidate the kid. It wasn’t yet August, but Robinson had already been hit twelve times. He stood there snarling, right on top of the plate. He ignored the customary batter-pitcher compact of giving up one half of the plate, and for it, Robinson would be hit twenty times in 1956 alone. It would be a hallmark of his long career. By the time he retired, in 1975, he would be hit a total of 198 times. By contrast, Henry was hit by pitches thirty-times over twenty-three seasons.

  Robinson was not a beneficiary of the kingmakers in the East Coast media machine. He played in dowdy Cincinnati, which by all accounts was a city hostile toward blacks. Cincinnati was so fearful of offending the conservative middle-American attitude that in 1956, in the age of McCarthyism, the Reds changed their name to the Redlegs, lest anyone think the baseball team had sided with the Communists. It was only a matter of time before Robinson chafed in Cincinnati, but in the summer of 1956, Frank Robinson was the most exciting player in the National League.

  Then, for Henry Aaron, came the unkindest cut: Robinson was named to start in right field in the All-Star Game. Robinson, in fact, would be the only black starter in the game, with Mays, Aaron, and Ernie Banks on the bench.

  FOLLOWING THE ALL-STAR Game, the Dodgers traveled to Milwaukee for four games. The standings showed Cincinnati in first place, up on Milwaukee by a game and a half and by two on Brooklyn, but no one really believed the Redlegs would be around for the whole 154 games. The Braves knew beating Brooklyn would be the only measure by which they were judged. For the doubleheader opener on July 12, 41,000 burghers packed County Stadium, Bob Buhl versus Roger Craig. Adcock boomed a long homer in the fifth to make it 1–0, and Buhl led 2–0 into the ninth. Jackie Robinson grounded to third for the first out. Hodges fouled out to third. Buhl, too close to victory, grew nervous, pitching as though he were defusing a bomb. Nelson rapped a single to center; Furillo followed with one to left. The groans in the crowd grew more unsettled. Against the Dodgers, this was the kind of game Charlie Grimm always found a way to lose. Haney didn’t move. Roy Campanella stepped to the plate, salty on about a hundred different levels. The first was that he was having the worst hitting year of his career. Campy, who’d won three MVP awards, couldn’t crack .240. The second was that on this day, he was already zero for three with a strike-out. Buhl threw two quick fastballs by him, and then pitched to him carefully, so carefully, in fact, that Campanella walked to load the bases. That brought up Rube Walker, the same Rube Walker who had singled in the ninth inning in Grimm’s penultimate game as manager, the game in which Grimm had forgotten who was on deck. Walker stepped in on Buhl and broke the Braves hearts again, lashing an apparent game-winning drive down the first-base line.

  Except that Frank Torre, who had just entered the game as a defensive replacement for Adcock, leaped and stabbed the ball out of the air, saving the game for Buhl. He was now 10–4 on the season and had beaten the Dodgers five times.

  The rest of the weekend was pure magic. The second game was rained out and in the rescheduled doubleheader—Friday night, July 13—the Braves gave Milwaukee something to remember and the Dodgers something to fear. In the first game, in front of 40,169, Newcombe lasted but one inning, blasted out of existence by Adcock’s two-run homer, which led a six-run first.

  The Dodgers pieced together two runs in the second as wheels within wheels turned. It was only mid-July, but a referendum on the Braves toughness was taking place. The score was 6–2 and it should have been more. Don Drysdale, all six feet, six inches of him, with his nasty slider and nastier disposition, didn’t really have it. They should have punched him out in the second, his first inning of work, but Henry bounced into the rally-killing double play with two on and one out. Milwaukee had Drysdale again in the third and the Dodgers looked rattled. Covington singled and Campy dropped a foul pop. Two more on and one out again, but Drysdale walked into the dugout, untouched, when Rice grounded into another double play. The Braves held a four-run lead, but they were leaving ducks on the bases every inning.

  In the fourth, Drysdale gave up a double to Danny O’Connell and Campy let the next pitch roll through his legs. With O’Connell dancing off third, needing just a grounder or fly ball to bring him home, Logan bounced a chopper to Robinson at third, forcing O’Connell to scamper back. Drysdale, the magician, escaped again when Mathews, ever dangerous, ended the inning by lining to Robinson.

  More than any ot
her member of the Dodgers, it was Robinson, thirty-seven years old and rancorous, who was convinced that Milwaukee couldn’t play in the thin air of a pennant chase. And here, again, when the details of the game seemed to be showing that the Braves were the more talented team, it was being proved. Drysdale should have been toast, putting men on in every inning, and yet he hadn’t broken, hadn’t even given up another run. The score may have looked like a blowout at 6–2, but that was the thing about baseball—one swing of the bat could tie it. The Braves hadn’t shown Robinson anything. The Dodgers should have been dead and yet they were one rally away from recovery.

  Drysdale received his cosmic reward in the top of the fifth, bouncing a liner off Ray Crone that caromed from the pitcher to Logan for an infield single. Then the flood came: a single by Gilliam, a double by Reese, which made it 6–3. Bat held high above his head, Robinson stepped up on Crone, with runners on second and third and with one out, and ripped a two-run single to center, and it was 6–5. It was Durocher who famously said Robinson “didn’t come to beat ya. He come to stick the bat up your ass.”

  And so here was Jackie, having snared the final two outs the previous inning, driving in two runs in the middle of this rally, taking the game into his hands. The next exchange would detail why no single statistic could properly summarize his impact as a winning ballplayer. With Crone shaking, the Milwaukeeans sitting on their hands as they watched their big lead melt like a July snow cone, Robinson went for the jugular, faking twice before finally stealing second. Crone was so rattled, he walked Hodges, and Haney came out with the hook.

  Dave Jolly entered and chucked a wild pitch that sent Robinson to third. Without the benefit of a hit, Robinson tied the game at 6–6 on a fielder’s choice.

  In later years, these games would be deliciously remembered for differing reasons. Johnny Logan believed what transpired over those next days as the moment the Braves transformed themselves into a championship personality, finally discarding a reputation as carousers who spit the bit when the pressure rose. The writer Roger Kahn would remember the Robinson performance as another example of the Einstein adage “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.”

  Robinson was largely finished as an everyday player, as his diminished skills could no longer support his furious activism. But in short bursts, during big games, he could still be a devastating impact player. From the vantage point of the score book, Robinson had done nothing remarkable that Friday—a couple of putouts, an RBI base hit, and a stolen base—but placed in the context of the game and the season and the intensifying relationship between the two teams, he had once again made the difference.

  For spending the afternoon in the pressure cooker, Henry had not done much. He’d struck out. He started a Brooklyn rally with his tenth error of the season and killed a rally by hitting into a double play.

  But when he doubled off Clem Labine to lead off the seventh in a tie game, it was the seasoned Dodgers who crumbled. Labine’s error allowed Aaron to advance to third and score the go-ahead run on a Bruton sacrifice fly. In the eighth, it was Labine again, giving up a leadoff double to O’Connell and committing another error on the very next batter. With O’Connell on third, Mathews walked to keep the double play intact.

  That brought up Henry, with a duck sitting on third and Mathews at first. Labine wanted to pitch Aaron inside, hard at first, and then soft enough to force a double-play grounder. Henry took a pitch. On the next, O’Connell broke for home, and Henry, the power hitter, pulled a Robinson, dropping a perfect bunt in front of Labine as O’Connell raced home with an insurance run in a sweaty 8–6 Milwaukee victory.

  Burdette took the mound in the second game and immediately gave up four in the first. Naturally, Robinson was at the center of the fray. Winning the game was important, but beating Burdette came with an even bigger payoff, for it meant there was no one the Braves could run out to the mound with a psychological advantage. Three batters into the game, Burdette was already down 2–0, with Snider on first. Robinson followed with a single. Nelson reached on a bunt single to third, loading the bases. That’s when Robinson sensed a chance to break Burdette’s will.

  Furillo bounced a double-play ball to O’Connell at second. No harm there, because with Snider on third, Haney was conceding Snider’s run to get two outs. Being down 3–0 in the first inning wasn’t ideal, but he had twenty-seven outs to make up the difference.

  But Robinson raced to third, as he was supposed to do, and then kept on running. Surprised, Adcock took Logan’s relay and spun toward the plate, a flying Robinson careening for the plate, Burdette screaming, “Home! Home!” Adcock hit Del Rice in the glove with the throw, but Robinson was already dusting himself off, trotting gingerly toward the Dodgers dugout, and it was 4–0.

  It was the kind of play few players would ever dare to attempt, the kind of play even fewer had the skills to consider, and the kind an even smaller percentage thought could work. Even though he was now on one knee in the dugout, gingerly holding his crotch, while Burdette spewed venom at him, he had scored from second on a double play. If he had to do it alone, Jackie Robinson would make the Braves crack.

  The great educator Booker T. Washington (fourth from right) vacationed in Mobile and spent much political capital fighting unsuccessfully to prevent the implementation of Jim Crow policies there. It was into a strict culture of segregation that three generations of Aaron men were born.

  Almost as if preordained, the specter of Babe Ruth would never be far from Henry Aaron. Ruth was born February 6, Henry a day earlier. Ruth finished his career with the Braves, the team that would one day draft Henry. In the same year Herbert and Stella Aaron moved to Mobile, Ruth poses before an exhibition at Hartwell Field.

  The pool halls of Davis Avenue appealed to a young Henry Aaron far more than education, leading to his expulsion from high school. He attended the Josephine Allen Institute, but Henry bet his entire future on baseball.

  When Herbert Aaron finally found steady work, it was as a riveter with the Alabama Dry Dock & Shipbuilding Company on Pinto Island. Until a 1942 riot, white and black employees worked alongside one another, though they would still suffer the humiliation of segregated entrances at the main plant.

  Henry joined Jacksonville, part of the notorious South Atlantic League, as a second baseman in 1953. Along with Felix Mantilla and Horace Garner, he would integrate the league while winning MVP honors.

  A staple of the segregated era: black players living in a boarding house in the Negro section of town. White players on the Braves resided at a resort hotel in Bradenton, Florida, during spring training, while Henry, Charlie White (center), and Bill Bruton (right) lived at the home of Lulu Mae Gibson.

  During his early years, no player would have as much of an impact on Henry as Bill Bruton (second from right). Bruton taught a young Henry Aaron how to dress, how to tip, places to avoid on the road, and, most important, how to begin pressing Braves management to end the segregationist practices during spring training. From left: Jim Pendleton, Charlie White, Bruton, and Henry Aaron.

  Few teams in history ever boasted as powerful a trio in the middle of the batting order as did the Milwaukee Braves, with Henry hitting fourth, between Eddie Mathews (center) and Joe Adcock. Henry loved Mathews, but he and Joe Adcock were never close. Henry believed Adcock to be the most racist member of the Braves. It was Adcock who was responsible for the saddling Henry with the unflattering nicknames “Stepin Fetchit,” “Snowshoes,” and “Slow Motion Henry.”

  While baseball focused on his rivalry with Willie Mays, it was Jackie Robinson after whom Henry patterned his career, and Robinson who inspired Aaron to be a person of import following his retirement. Aaron always remembered that Robinson was never offered a job by Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley (right) when he left the game, and he resolved to cultivate relationships with the game’s power brokers.

  Fresh off of winning his first batting title, Henry
arrived in Bradenton for spring training in 1957. By season’s end, he would hit a pennant-winning home run, win the World Series, and secure the Most Valuable Player award for the only time in his career.

  On Henry’s first trip to Boston, in May 1957, he and Ted Williams posed before a charity exhibition game at Fenway Park between the Braves and the Red Sox. It was Williams, the curmudgeonly perfectionist, who was both taken by Henry’s accomplishments and perplexed by his unorthodox hitting style. “You can’t hit for power off your front foot,” Williams often said. “You just can’t do it.”

  The Wrist Hitter: Perhaps no player in the history of the game would be as celebrated for his lightning-quick wrists as Henry Aaron. “You might get him out once,” Don Drysdale once said, “but don’t think for a minute you’re going make a living throwing the ball past by Henry Aaron.”

  Warren Spahn won 363 games and was the unquestioned leader of the Braves pitching staff. Spahn was a decorated World War II veteran, awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Along with Henry and Eddie Mathews, Spahn would be elected to the Hall of Fame, but while Henry and Spahn shared mutual respect, Spahn’s irreverence and unprogressive racial attitudes made for a professional but sometimes uneasy relationship.

  Henry at home with Barbara, a young Gaile, and infant Lary. The Aarons lived on North 29th Street, in the segregated Bronzeville section of Milwaukee. As Henry’s celebrity increased, the family became the first and only black family allowed to move to the suburb of Mequon, a source of pride and tension on both sides of the roiling civil rights movement in the city.