Only 16,236 fans showed up for Henry’s seven hundredth, the Atlanta fan base thereby solidifying its reputation for being ambivalent to baseball. That wasn’t even the worst of it, which happened to be the official baseball response to Henry’s achievement. Nothing. Not a phone call or telegram congratulating him from Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner of baseball.
For two years, Henry had played it cool where baseball was concerned. He said nothing bothered him, not the pressure of the chase, not the hate mail, not the death threats that arrived by the bucketful so often on stained composition paper, the suffocating press coverage, or even the unwinnable comparisons to Ruth.
Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner, however, had insulted Henry. It would never be quite clear why Henry held Kuhn in such high esteem. The two had no previous history and it wasn’t as if this commissioner was particularly fond of the players. Marvin Miller had been installed as the head of the surging Major League Baseball Players Association and he had begun to establish a new, empowering orthodoxy: The commissioner was not your friend. The commissioner was not your ally. The commissioner was not impartial. The commissioner of baseball, despite the rhetoric of using his power in the “best interests of baseball” actually used his power in the best interests of the clubs. After all, the owners hired the commissioner. If the commissioner were a nonpartisan advocate for players and owners alike, the players would have input in who actually got the job and who kept it. There was, too, the biggest of disconnects that Miller passionately imparted to the black players: No commissioner ever used his “best interest of the game” power to integrate the sport. One—Landis—actively kept blacks from playing, for it was not a coincidence that integration moved quickly after Landis’s death in 1944. Nevertheless, Henry seemed to possess respect for the office of the commissioner. He was, if nothing else, a believer in the hierarchy.
If Henry had his reasons for his drive toward beating Ruth’s record, people like Bowie Kuhn represented an important motivation. Kuhn was a member of the baseball establishment, first a longtime lawyer for the league before being elected commissioner in 1969. He was arrogant and uninterested in the larger tapestry of black achievement or in much beyond maintaining the power of the elite. Kuhn was an unimpressive thinker, unable to recognize the speed of change taking place in his sport and society in general. He was unprogressive, and his inability to acknowledge the reserve clause as untenable (and recognize Marvin Miller’s superior intellect) cost the owners billions of dollars and years of control. His comportment was one of a man who believed himself above being held accountable to players. He was condescending and seemed totally unaware that Henry saw right through him.
The commissioner would say that he did not want to set the precedent of congratulating every player for their daily milestones—hitting for the cycle, their 100th double, 135th win, and 1,000 th hit—as if he or any baseball fan had been fans when both Ruth and Aaron had reached their individual milestones. He assured Henry that he hadn’t shown up for his seven hundredth because he was saving his appearance for the big one, when Henry broke Ruth’s record. As the news cycle mushroomed, Kuhn and Henry conversed days later and the commissioner made Henry a promise: “I’ll be there for seven hundred and fifteen.”
Two weeks later, before the Braves played the finale of three games the perennially lost Cubs, the Reverend Jesse Jackson invited Henry to be the breakfast speaker at a gathering sponsored by Jackson’s organization, Operation Push. During the late 1960s, as Jackson and Henry both gained national prominence, the two formed a budding friendship. At a south-side storefront, Henry was greeted by an overflow crowd of black Little League teams, black Boy Scout troops, and community organizers. Standing tall and athletically next to Henry, Jackson wore an olive T-shirt with green horizontal stripes and a dark collar, sporting a full Afro, a mustache, and muttonchop sideburns. Jackson was thirty-one at the time and had been a collegiate athlete. With his familiar oratory, Jackson introduced Henry:
He refused to defile his body220 and refused to have his mind defiled, and because he’s overcome staggering odds we look to him as a success model, as one who represents the very best in our people. When we look at Hank, there’s something on the outside in his presence that tells us that we can achieve, and because he’s just like us, there’s something on the inside that tells us that we deserve to achieve, and if he can any man can.
Henry stepped to the podium and addressed the crowd. A poster stood on the wall behind him, red bordered in gold, in the center a black silhouette of the African continent. Henry was dressed fastidiously but stylishly—a brown suit and eggshell shirt—a brown striped tie with a double Windsor knot:
I would like to read to you221 this morning a letter I received from Chicago and I consider this a real good letter, considering some of the letters I’ve gotten in the past, and it reads as follows:
Why are they making such a big fuss about you hitting 700 home runs? Please remember you have been to bat 2700 more times than Babe Ruth. If Babe Ruth came to bat 27 [sic] more times he would have hit 814 home runs. So Hank, what are you bragging about? Let’s have the truth: you mentioned if you were white, they would give you more credit. That’s ignorant. Stupid. Hank, there’re three things you can’t give a nigger: a black eye, a puffed lip, or a job.”
In delivering the punch line, Henry gave a genuine laugh, because even gallows humor could be funny in the right crowd, and here with Jackson, surrounded by black faces, he was protected, in a positive environment, by his people. He beamed the thousand-watt smile that had been suppressed by fog for the previous two years, the one that even Dusty Baker could not lift. Then he continued:
And it went on to say the Cubs stink, stink, stink, and gave me a phony name and address at the end. But these are the kind of letters I receive, and when I was talking about hate mail, this is a good one compared to some of the others. So I consider this a good one. Things like this just make me push a little harder, because just as Reverend Jesse Jackson said, first of all, growing up in Mobile, Alabama being a black person, I already realized I had two strikes against me, and I certainly wasn’t going to let them get the third strike against me. I figured that being a baseball player, there was only one way to go, and that was up.
A few hours later, Henry hit home run 702 at Wrigley, and then 703 and 704 the next two nights at Jarry Park in Montreal. The next one came at home, against the Cardinals, off of a weak slider from the Canadian right-hander Reggie Cleveland. He hit seven during the month of September, to finish with forty for the season, but, sitting on 713 on the final day of the season in Atlanta, in his final at bat, with the Aaron shift on against Houston pitcher Dave Roberts, he popped up weakly to second. It was over until 1974.
IT HAD ALWAYS been true that Henry found his solitude in the winter, when the baseball season had finally ended. The regular season provided no respite. At home, Henry was smothered under the crush of interview requests and public appearances. On the road, Henry had set up an elaborate plan to create a sliver of privacy: two hotels on the road, one that remained empty under the name Henry Aaron, the other—where Henry actually slept—listed under the alias A. Diefendorfer. When he was young, Henry would find the most secluded spot on Three Mile Creek and sit on the banks of the river in Toulminville, fishing and skipping rocks, usually with his friend Cornelius Giles, hidden from view. At thirty-nine, he took to the water anew, on the seventeen-foot speedboat he’d bought as a refuge, first going out into Polecat Bay and then north up the Spanish River toward Grand Bay. Henry also owned a twenty-seven-foot cabin cruiser, which he would use when he ventured south into larger bodies of water, taking down into the mouth of Mobile Bay and beyond. “It’s the only place,”222 he said of his boats in 1973, “where the phone doesn’t ring.”
That Henry escaped along the rivers toward the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico was somewhat incongruous, for his mother, Stella, had always discouraged him from going near the water. Even now, when he was almost forty, the owner o
f two boats, Henry could not swim well enough to save his own life. Yet, throughout his periods of turmoil, it was the inky waters of Mobile Bay to which he turned for catharsis. His routine was often the same: He would arrive in Mobile without warning, sneaking in a day or so early. Quite often, he would not even tell Herbert or Stella that he would be arriving, for with fame there was never any such thing as a secret. But the locals in Mobile, the ones who worked in the restaurants and the hotels, always knew when Henry was coming to town. The good ones, the ones who knew a day early, would understand, of course. But the ones who weren’t connected, who found out that the great Aaron had just blown through town, unseen (again), began to wonder just what Henry held against Mobile, so concretely and for so long. The locals were proud of him; that was all. They couldn’t exactly be blamed, either, for it was no secret that Henry’s relationship with Mobile was complicated. Even when he was in his mid-seventies, there would be people in Mobile who believed Henry could never quite forgive the city for its past, for what it had done to Herbert and to so many other black men. But during the fall and winter months of 1973, Henry did not advertise his visits anywhere. One day of warning could ruin the entire purpose of the trip, which was to escape, to indulge in a moment of peace.
Safely in Toulminville, Henry would contact his brother Hebert junior, who would contact Joseph Coleman, one of Henry’s old classmates, who was known as an expert with a boat, rod, and reel. Calvin Wardlaw, always armed, always watching, would be with them, as well. Sometimes, there were others, but those invitees always came at a moment’s notice. On the water, Calvin enjoyed Henry best. Henry would reminisce about Mobile, point out the physical markers of his history, drift into the years that belonged to him, long before he was Hank. And it was in these moments, too precious to last, when Henry recharged, watching Joe Coleman, soft-bellied and shirtless, his torso mimicking the winding river: vertical for a moment before curving wide and growing expansive. Herbert junior looked casual in his plaid pants, the group sauntering down the river in search of croakers and bass. Croakers were the toughest ones to catch, Henry said, because once caught, their gills popped out, felt like needles.
Henry would sit in the boat,223 his legs dangling over the bow, like a twelve-year-old surrounded by grown-ups, the only man of the group who always wore a life preserver. He would sit on the edge of the boat, rod in his right hand, soaking in the pieces of himself that seemed so difficult to keep, immersed less in the camaraderie than in the serenity surrounding him, the chopping waters, hunched trees, and faint lavender of the wisteria, the elements upon which he would rely for regeneration.
IN DECEMBER 1973, Henry announced he had signed a five-year, one-million-dollar personal-services contract with the television manufacturer Magnavox. Henry would do commercials, make public appearances on behalf of the company, and grace virtually every Sunday paper in the country, standing next to a shiny Magnavox color TV in a full-page ad.
To the outside world, Henry stood in an enviable position; the breaking of Ruth’s record would produce even greater financial opportunities. He was already the highest-paid star in the game. Things were moving quickly. Sammy Davis, Jr., flew Henry to Beverly Hills to discuss a movie project, tentatively titled The Hank Aaron Story.
What was not so well known at the time was that Henry was teetering on the verge of financial collapse, and he had signed the exclusivity deal with Magnavox (though he likely could have commanded more than a million) as a sure way to begin reversing his sinking finances. When he first arrived in Atlanta, he teamed with a consortium of white businessmen for a barbecue restaurant start-up in southwest Atlanta. The restaurant was called Hammerin’ Hank’s, and the initial goal of the business plan was for the first restaurant to be the centerpiece of a powerful local chain. The restaurant disappeared faster than one of Henry’s home-run balls into the night. Not long thereafter, Henry connected with another business partner, who enticed him to think big and invest in sugar futures, a risky enterprise, which sounded better than it actually was. When he looked at the balance sheet, Henry saw he had lost twenty thousand dollars.
Then, soon after Henry signed the richest contract in baseball history, came the big fall. In the spring of 1972, Henry finalized a three-year, $200,000 contract. He immediately teamed with two investment bankers (men he would refuse to name) and gave them power of attorney—which is to say, complete control over his finances. His paychecks were signed over directly to them. The firm invested his money for him, and it was so easy, he was told, he didn’t have to lift a finger. Over the ensuing months, Henry proceeded to hit home runs, make the all-star team, and lose his shirt. Finally, his secretary, Carla Koplin, suggested that he hire an auditor to check out where his money was going and investigate the firm’s legitimacy. Henry would tell the story that when the auditors arrived, they found that the firm did not exist. Their offices were vacated and the two men had blown town.
The swindle had damaging implications. Following the 1965 season, Henry had begun thinking about his future beyond baseball. He had just completed his twelfth season and started to take the long view that he naturally could not play forever. In 1966, for the first time, he began deferring portions of his salary for when he retired, so he would still receive income. That year, Henry’s salary was $70,000 and he deferred $20,000 for future payment. The following year, Henry received a raise to $92,500, with $42,500 to be deferred, disbursed in semimonthly cash payments following his retirement.
In 1973, Henry earned $165,000, with $50,000 to be disbursed over a ten-year period beginning at retirement. As he grew more involved with his real-estate and restaurant ventures, Henry needed cash flow. On June 12, 1973, he took out a bank loan of $300,000 secured by the Braves. As part of the agreement, Henry made a handshake deal, verbally agreeing to repay the loan—$10,000 per quarter, or all of the cash flow from the project, whichever was greater. When the project went bust, Henry was on the hook for the loan, $40,000 per year.
When he totaled the damage, Henry figured he’d lost his entire life savings, well in excess of one million dollars. His lawyers told him he had been taught an expensive, cautionary lesson and that perhaps he needed to file for bankruptcy. There was only one way to assess where Henry stood during 1973 and 1974.
“I was wiped out,” he said.
EVEN THE OFF-SEASON could not protect him, and during the final months of 1973, Henry’s problems at least rivaled the discomfort of his fame. On November 12, 1973, a month before the Magnavox deal was announced, on November 14, 1973, Henry married Billye Williams, a former Atlanta television host, in a private ceremony at the University of the West Indies chapel in Mona, Jamaica, after nearly three years of dating. But after hearing about the Magnavox deal and his $200,000 baseball contract, Barbara wanted more money. Not long after he became the home-run king, she took him to court to get it. He was the highest-paid player in baseball, and the two would trade accusations, his that she was obstructing him from spending more time with his children, hers that now that his income had increased, so should her alimony, from $1,600 a month to $16,000.
AARON SUED FOR TENFOLD ALIMONY224
ATLANTA, JUNE 3 (AP)—Hank Aaron’s former wife filed a petition in Superior Court here today seeking an increase in the alimony and child support payments she currently receives from the Braves’ baseball star.
Barbara Aaron said the Atlanta Braves’ slugger was earning about $100,000 a year when they divorced in February 1971, but now earns “in excess” of a million dollars per year.
Years later, he would discuss these years with a fair amount of regret, saying that in some instances he had become what he had always dreaded: the rich ballplayer with no money. “I was easy, just like so many athletes today,” he recalled. “It’s not easy when you don’t know anything about nothin’ and you have all this money.” He had been careful about frivolities, enjoyed being famous without the extravagances that would define the modern-day athlete. He drove a 1973 Chevrolet instead of a P
orsche, wasn’t the kind of player who wore a shirt once and threw it out, and yet in the months before he would break the record, he was broke.
Once the Magnavox deal was finalized, Henry began to prepare for spring training with an eye on the future. On February 5, 1974, he turned forty, and Henry had resolved that he would endeavor to make massive changes with regard to business matters. Taking better care of his finances was a given. He would be more involved. He would learn the businesses that carried his name. Women, cars, and clothes were easy, high-profile ways to lose it all, but so, too, were bad investments.
“I was angry, but I wasn’t helpless. I still had my name and time to recoup,” he said. “I decided to be more careful with my money.”
HE DID NOT approach the challenge of breaking Ruth’s record, at least privately, with self-deprecation, that “Aw, shucks, fellas” immodesty. Now that it was in sight, surpassing Ruth, being the best there ever was at hitting home runs, if not an obsession, something he craved, and now he had to wait for the entire offseason. One day in Mobile, he told Stella that he wanted the record. “He said, ‘I want a record of my own,’” she recalled. To his mind, because he was so close, it was as if the record already belonged to him, and that was where his mind played such cruel tricks on him, where life teased and taunted him with its power over him and destiny, where he knew he was at his least potent. At the tail end of the 1973 season, a piece entitled “Henry Aaron’s Golden Autumn” appeared in Time magazine. It was clear in the article that he had begun to smell the record. “I’ve always read Mickey Mantle,225 Willie Mays, Roger Maris—then Hank Aaron. I’ve worked awfully hard to get my name up front,” he told the interviewer. “I’ve waited for my time, and it’s just now coming.”
Still, the forces of life, Henry knew, were far more difficult to face than any hard thrower on the mound. The batter’s box was the easy part. That was where Henry was king, the most powerful man on earth, in control of every facet of his life—but only at that moment. Guaranteeing that he would have another opportunity to stand in the box, to dig in and take the record in his hands and claim it for his own was another story altogether.
The Last Hero Page 44