The Last Hero

by Howard Bryant

  There was first the money and then the business of defending the pennant, and the tough, militaristic Haney knew only one way: keeping his foot on the necks of his players. One result was inevitable clashes—both with the club’s free spirits, who always needed a short leash, and the sturdy veterans, who believed their performance the previous year had earned them the right not to have Haney turning another training camp into boot camp.

  Another result was a certain loss of the innocence that surrounded the entire Milwaukee affair, and each player lamented the sober reality that chasing a goal is far more romantic than achieving it, and while the 1958 season would be a highly successful and efficient one, it felt to Henry, and especially to Mathews, a little less sparkly, a little less fun.

  Take the case of Bob Hazle and the cool afternoon of May 7, 1958, a Wednesday afternoon, in St. Louis, when Herman Wehmeier took the mound against the Braves. This time, Burdette was on the mound and Wehmeier, for once against the Braves, looked exactly like the ham-and-egg pitcher he was to the rest of the league.

  Schoendienst led off the game, Logan to follow. Both singled. Mathews flied to right. Henry doubled in both runs, and Frank Torre doubled him in. Then Covington stepped up and took a Wehmeier offering and sent it clear into Kansas. Wehmeier faced six batters, five of whom got hits, three of whom nailed extra base hits, all five of whom scored. Fred Hutchinson, the Cardinals manager, called for Larry Jackson out of the bull pen. Hazle stepped up, and Jackson chucked a fastball, hard and straight and deadly, slightly behind Hazle, who instinctively backed into the ball. Hazle was knocked unconscious.

  Exactly seventeen days later, Quinn had two things to say to Hazle. The first was to ask him how he was doing. The second was to tell him he’d been sold to Detroit.

  This was the way management always made sure to remind players that yesterday’s news was today’s liability, and the reminders could be as icy as the wind off Lake Michigan. As much as Spahn or Burdette or Henry Aaron, Hurricane Hazle had won the 1957 pennant. Sure, he had stopped hitting (he had actually stopped against the Yankees during the Series), but no matter how many years a player played in the big leagues, few could ever get used to the callousness of management. Mathews recalled the moment in Eddie Mathews and the National Pastime:

  The other ballplayers were completely stunned130 and upset about it. We thought it sucked. Here was a guy who came out of nowhere and led us, not single-handedly, but led us to our first World Series. He was in a slump the first month of 1958, but he’d had some ankle trouble in the spring. We figured the ballclub owed him more than that. He was 27 years old and a super-nice kid. After he came up in 1957, he was just a part of us. Whenever we’d go out, he’d come with us, just a nice guy, what I would call a good old Southern boy, fun laughs, the whole bit. Of course, I never understood a lot of the stuff that went on in baseball, but we were pretty disappointed when Hazle was dumped. We all said, “What the hell did he do wrong, have an affair with the general manager’s wife?”

  Gene Conley was next. Never a Haney favorite, Conley found himself banished to the bull pen. Then his arm started to hurt, and he spiraled; he would never be as promising as he once was. Conley would not look back on 1958 fondly, for it represented one of those curious phenomena in sport when the team did well, while the individual player struggled. For years, the two stalwarts of the pitching staff, Spahn and Burdette, would tease Conley about his mechanics. Neither had to deal with Conley’s height, but both men knew potentially dangerous mechanics when they saw them, and Conley’s motion tended to place a great deal of strain on his elbow and shoulder.

  And in those days, there was no pitch count, no video, and no wet nurse catering to every need of the pitcher, as would be the case in the future, when teams poured so much money into pitchers that they actually took an interest in their investment. With the exception of the great former Brave Johnny Sain, the pitching coaches in 1958 were not much more than cronies.

  “Those guys, all they did was carry the balls to BP,”131 Gene Conley recalled. “That was it. Whitlow Wyatt and all, come on. Their job was to drink with the manager, keep him company. I took the ball and threw. No one helped me with mechanics. I threw the ball until it hurt, and then I threw some more.”

  Yet, the Braves were a better team than in 1957. Spahn won his first six decisions. Bob Rush, picked up from the Cubs in the off-season, won six of his first nine. The Braves didn’t mash the ball as they had in earlier years, but they pitched as never before. Nevertheless, the season hadn’t been a wire-to-wire finish, and in the early months there were small surprises, such as the sudden ascension of the Giants—the San Francisco Giants—as well as that of the emerging Pittsburgh Pirates and the resilient Cardinals. An equal surprise was that the Los Angeles Dodgers were nowhere to be seen. They would finish twenty-one games out of first and, for the first time since 1945, cease to be a threat during the season. (But finishing even more than twenty games out of the money didn’t stop the Dodgers from being hell on the Braves: Los Angeles beat the Braves fourteen out of twenty-two times.)

  On June 5, the wind cutting hard and nasty across Seals Stadium in San Francisco, Willie Mays singled off Conley in the bottom of the twelfth inning of a 4–4 game. The next batter, Jim Finigan, drilled a double into the right-center gap. Mays took off, a determined low-flying missile on the base paths. In later years, even Henry, who rarely ceded advantage to another player, would marvel at how Willie ran, surgically slicing the bases, his arms pumping furiously through the air. As Mays hit third base, Bob Stevens, the veteran baseball writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, yelled “No!” from the press box. Mays had blown through the sign and rushed home to win the game. Henry dug the ball out from the wall, turned, and fired a low-flying missile of his own toward the plate. The ball skidded once in the dirt cutout and bounced directly into the glove of the catcher, Del Crandall. In one motion, Crandall caught Henry’s relay, wheeled to his left, and waited to tag Mays. When the home-plate umpire, Frank Secory, raised his right hand to call Mays out at home, Stevens let out a loud yell for all the scribes to hear. “Stupid!”

  The next batter, Orlando Cepeda, singled home Finigan with the winning run. The loss left Conley at 0–4, and the Giants and Braves were tied for first place, with Cincinnati, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and even the Cubs within six games. They would lose the next four, fall out of first, while leaving all eight teams of the National League separated by only seven and a half games.

  The Braves had finally reached the top levels of the sport and spent much of the year learning how to stay there, but their cleanup hitter, Henry Aaron, had already begun charting an entirely different course for himself.

  It was in 1958 when the dual tracks of his personal life and his athletic life would begin to intersect.

  IN THE WEEKS that Lary Aaron held on to life at St. Anthony’s, Henry grew friendly with Michael Sablica, a Catholic priest who introduced himself to Henry following little Gary’s death. Barbara’s nurse was a member of Sablica’s parish in Milwaukee, and when told of the Aarons’ ordeal, the young priest sought out Henry to express his condolences. Sablica was just thirty-three, ten years older than Henry, and was newly ordained. He, too, had been an athlete, a linebacker on the football team at Marquette during the war years.

  In the months that followed, Father Sablica and Henry strengthened their bond, playing handball at Marquette University and occasional rounds of golf. With his considerable hand-eye coordination, Henry was drawn to handball and was a formidable player, but Sablica had been an accomplished player himself, and the two engaged in spirited matches. They talked about family and baseball and Milwaukee, for Henry had now been in the city for nearly four years and had begun to feel a fondness for Milwaukee he hadn’t anticipated. Henry’s affection for the city grew quickly, despite some uncomfortable moments, most obviously his sister Alfredia’s difficult school experience in 1957 and the foreseeable unease that would come with his next ambition: to buy a house in wha
t were the virtually all-white suburbs.

  Even though Henry was now a member of the beloved Milwaukee Braves, he understood that such a decision would test the limits of Milwaukee’s tolerance and would determine how he assessed the people of Milwaukee as a group. He also understood, however, that regardless of the result, his would not be a typical experience. Henry would often say that how he was treated in Milwaukee would always be enhanced by his own special status as a famous athlete, that he knew the daily life of the average black person in the city was not nearly as welcoming.

  Henry and Father Mike, as he had come to be known, talked about many issues, but mostly, they talked about faith. More accurately, they talked about the intersection between faith and the growing question of civil rights. Henry told Sablica that while he had been raised in the traditions of the southern black church, he had been intrigued about other religions and denominations. Whether this interest was a direct by-product of Gary’s death or Lary’s struggle to survive—or merely because he saw an opportunity to increase his own religious knowledge—Henry seemed open to the teachings of Catholicism, certainly willing to expand his worldview beyond baseball and the safety and comforts of his own situation. One day, after a round of golf, Father Mike noticed a small book Henry kept in his glove compartment; it was titled The Life of Christ.

  That the booklet surprised Father Mike said as much about his own presuppositions as it did about Henry’s religious curiosity. Sablica was, like most Milwaukeeans, a Braves fan, and he didn’t want to run afoul of management by approaching Henry without first going through the proper channels. At the time they met at St. Anthony’s, Father Mike didn’t know much more about Henry than what he’d read in the newspapers and sports periodicals. He later admitted he had been influenced by the depictions of Henry as something of a simpleton, the characterization of Furman Bisher in The Saturday Evening Post, uninterested in the larger questions of the world, lacking the articulateness to express whatever feelings he did have. It was an attitude confirmed by John Quinn, who told Sablica he believed Henry would have little interest in speaking to him. Quinn told Sablica that Henry was “uncomplicated” but that there was no harm in the priest approaching him.

  More accurately, Quinn likely preferred that Henry be uncomplicated, for Sablica hadn’t approached Henry that day at St. Anthony’s only for friendship. For years, even before he had entered the seminary, Michael James Sablica had possessed a passion for activism. He would be one of the early members of that small and often courageous group of Catholic priests who would take a passionate interest in the fight for equal rights.

  What particularly aroused Father Mike was the condition of Milwaukee’s black poor. The Sablicas had grown up in Milwaukee, and from an early age, Michael Sablica maintained an integrated lifestyle, one that revealed the disparities, both clear and subtle, existing between blacks and whites. There would be other American cities with more notorious reputations for segregation and the racial unrest that ensued—Birmingham, Boston, and later Detroit and Los Angeles, for example. But Milwaukee residents—despite the lack of national attention their city received—knew just how pronounced the lines of segregation truly were. They knew how staunchly the city’s banks and real estate agents protected those boundaries with sinister selling and mortgage practices that not only served to keep the races separate but made it increasingly difficult for blacks to purchase property even within their own circumscribed boundaries.

  The south side of Milwaukee, where Johnny Logan lived, was overwhelmingly white. The neighborhood was made up of predominately Italian and Irish working-class families. Clergymen of the Catholic Church who felt passionate about civil rights understood that change could come only with an assault on the northern preference for de facto segregation, meaning no laws barring blacks from equal opportunity existed on the books, but because of the social conditions and business practices in Milwaukee, the end result was the same.

  In a short time, the more activist members of the clergy would find themselves in the center of the civil rights movement. Sablica was a forerunner of James Groppi, the most famous of Milwaukee’s civil rights leaders. Groppi, born the eleventh of twelve children to Italian immigrants who settled on the south side of town, would be ordained in 1959, the year after Sablica. Like Sablica, Groppi was appalled by the living conditions in the black section of Milwaukee, and in the late 1950s he began a slow and relentless campaign against the city’s segregationist practices.

  As Henry rose to prominence as a player, one of Groppi’s prime targets was Judge Robert Cannon, the same Judge Cannon who rode the team bus with Casey Stengel before game three of the 1957 World Series, the same Judge Cannon who preceded Marvin Miller as head of a toothless organization called the Major League Baseball Players Association. Cannon was a Milwaukee insider and was a prominent member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a Milwaukee club that did not admit blacks. Cannon denounced the membership practices of the Eagles but did not resign his membership. In turn, Groppi organized demonstrations in front of the good judge’s house.

  For the priests committed to improving the conditions in the black slums, finding an appropriate place of entry into the social struggle represented a perilous journey, for convincing their blue-collar parishioners of the worthiness of the cause was often a difficult task. Sablica and Groppi faced resistance from clergy peers and elders, and clearly they did not advance as swiftly or as highly within the Church’s ranks as they might have had they not been so controversial. But the clergymen also understood that times were changing, and social forces were moving at a speed that required action from the Church.

  Whites who had become more affluent in the postwar years sought the appeal of the suburbs, which, in turn, reduced the numbers of children who attended Catholic schools within the city. With enrollments potentially affected and the racial composition of the city changing, the Church began looking for potential converts. Sablica held to a singular conviction: The Catholic Church could be a powerful instrument in the advancement of the black cause. It was only through Catholicism, he told Henry, that blacks could achieve the dignity and rights that had long been outside of their collective reach. It was a point he stressed to Henry during the spring of 1958.

  Henry was not unaware of the racial transitions taking place in Milwaukee. He and Barbara lived in Bronzeville, as did Felix Mantilla and Wes Covington. They represented the very demographic the Milwaukee Commission feared; affluent people who could afford the neighborhood of their choice but, because they were black, were forced to live in subpar conditions. Nor were the racial contradictions that came with being a famous baseball player lost on Henry. By being Hank Aaron, the rules could be bent and exceptions could always be made. Life could be easier, and it would be. Being awarded dispensation not afforded other blacks was an element of being famous that made Henry uncomfortable, especially given the dynamics of professional sports.

  Given the perspective of time, Sablica’s approach with regard to Henry now appears paternalistic, and more than a bit naïve. In fact, Sablica would later refer to this early view as naïve, a reversal of opinion that stemmed from the deep resistance toward social activism he experienced from his parishioners and fellow clergymen. Sablica also learned the complexities of the race and religion nexus from Henry. Once, before Henry headed for Bradenton and spring training, Sablica wished him good luck and reminded him to “attend mass every Sunday.” According to the 1972 book Bad Henry, Henry “looked his friend in the eye132 and answered softly, ‘Down there, they won’t let me go to mass.’”

  In the book, Sablica recalled the exchange. “I wouldn’t blame him personally if he never went to mass again for the rest of his life,” Sablica was quoted as saying.

  JOHN QUINN believed drawing Henry into the nascent civil rights movement of Milwaukee would only be a distraction, and within a short time, he attempted to discourage Henry’s contact with Sablica. What Quinn underestimated was Henry’s attitude toward racial and social
inequalities, which was shaped long before he had ever met Father Mike. Mobile had often provided the bitterest reminders of his place in the social order, and the fearlessness of Jackie Robinson had inspired him. The attitude Sablica projected reflected Henry’s own belief system, and perhaps for the first time in Aaron’s life, it was being amplified and articulated by a white man. Father Mike had been voicing a message in Milwaukee that was slowly being formulated across the country, led not by the Catholic Church but the black Baptist churches in the South: It would be the clergy who would fuse the dual purposes of religion and social justice. It was a message that immediately appealed to Henry. He had long been awaiting its arrival.

  BILLY BRUTON’S knee did not heal as quickly or as well as the doctors had forecast in the off-season, turning those optimistic pieces that ran in The Sporting News (“Bruton to Report on Time: Knee Healing Satisfactorily”) into more kindling for the winter fire. That meant the team’s best defensive outfielder would not be available when spring 1958 began and could not be counted on for the regular season. The truth was that Bruton would never again be the same player he was before the injury. When Danny O’Connell suffered at second base, Haney asked John Quinn to make a trade. When Bobby Thomson struggled in left, Haney and Quinn used a platoon of players—Pafko and Covington, mostly—for production.

  But when Haney was told that Bruton would not be back until mid-May at the earliest, and even then it was unclear what kind of player he would be, Haney’s solution was simple, and it wasn’t to look to the trade market for help: Put Henry Aaron in center, permanently.

  At the major-league level, there would not be a manager who Henry Aaron ever believed helped him become a better player. He would credit only two men in the minor leagues with improving him as a player and as a hitter. The first was Ben Geraghty in Jacksonville and the second was Mickey Owen, his manager with the Caguas team in Puerto Rico. Geraghty was quite likely the first white man who took an interest in his success, an invaluable dynamic for a young player, especially given the task of integrating the notorious South Atlantic League that faced Henry, Felix Mantilla, and Horace Garner. Watching him play with Caguas, Owen saw that Henry possessed an uncommon ability as a hitter, and he took it upon himself to help refine that ability.