The Last Hero

by Howard Bryant

  When his mind wandered, it brought him back most vividly to the dynamic Clemente, who had reached his three thousandth hit on the final day of the 1972 season and never lived to see the new year, killed in a tragic, unnecessary plane crash over the Caribbean. He thought about Roy Campanella, the Dodgers catcher headed for the Hall of Fame when the 1957 season ended, but after a terrible car crash on January 28, 1958, would not walk or use his hands ever again. And there was always Jackie, who had seriously thought of playing for the Giants in 1957, but then he climbed out of bed one day and life made the decision for him: He crumpled to the floor, betrayed by an arthritic knee that would never again cooperate. And maybe those nut jobs out there with their pens and their pads and stamps weren’t as blustery as Bob Hope thought. Maybe he would walk down the street and one of them would see his chance, size Henry up, and take it all away with a single shot.

  “I don’t want to wait,” Henry said when a reporter told him there was no need to worry, that he was so close to the record that it would be his within the first month of the 1974 season. “You can’t wait. Look at Clemente. What would have happened to Roberto Clemente if he had waited?”

  THE INVENTORY LIST for the Braves home opener looked as though it belonged to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade instead of to a baseball game. Bob Hope had the final figures and details for the evening: five thousand balloons, dancing girls, and two bands. For the eight previous home openers in Atlanta, an average of seventeen policemen had been assigned to work the game. But for the ninth, the April 8, 1974, home opener, the Atlanta Braves versus the Los Angeles Dodgers, that number would increase to sixty-three. Joe Shirley, the team director of security, discussed with Bartholomay the possibility of a riot when Henry hit his 715th home-run ball, so Shirley had mapped out a strategy to combat a potential free-for-all: The left-center-field bleachers had been designated ground zero, since that happened to be Henry’s power alley. Shirley would dispatch six policemen, four security men, and eight extra ushers to the left-center bleachers, with the intention of keeping order should the record breaker land in the same spot as so many of his balls in the past. The grounds crew was working to beat the forecast of intermittent rain, but they were professionals, so there was no reason to worry. Nearly a full day before game time, they had completed painting a red-white-and-blue replica of the map of the United States across shallow center field: 140 feet by 80.

  Hope’s celebrity overtures had borne fruit. Pearl Bailey was no longer just a wish. She was on board, having agreed, per Henry’s request, to sing the national anthem. Sammy Davis, Jr., had not only confirmed that he would attend but had already offered the Braves $25,000 for the home-run ball. Herbert Aaron would throw out the first pitch and both he and Stella would be part of the pregame festivities. Hope had concocted a program that would resemble the old TV show This Is Your Life. Herbert and Stella would stand in Alabama on the painted map, representing Mobile. Hope had contacted John Mullen, the old Braves executive who had signed Henry from the Clowns. Mullen would represent Indianapolis. Donald Davidson would stand on Boston, where the Braves were located when Henry signed in 1952. And Henry’s first big-league manager, Charlie Grimm, would appear, standing in for Milwaukee. Around the chain-link outfield fence would be eight-foot-high letters that read ATLANTA SALUTES HANK AARON.

  There would be no fraud, Bill Acree, the Braves clubhouse man was assured. Acree had been given the responsibility of guarding the specially marked baseballs that had been used for Braves games since Henry hit number seven hundred. It was one of the details that had been a colossal pain for the pitchers, since these were the years before memorabilia would become an industry, pitchers having gotten annoyed that a perfectly good ball was being tossed aside whenever Henry stepped to the plate. In a certain way, the pitchers felt Henry was being given an advantage, because a fresh ball was just a bit slicker, harder for a pitcher to grip. Any disadvantage to a pitcher, no matter how slight, tipped the scale in favor of a hitter of Henry’s skill.

  These were also the years before milestones had become marketing opportunities, moments to be captured and manipulated, and, of course, profited from. That made Bill Bartholomay the villain in the pinstriped suit, again ahead of his time for all the wrong reasons. In his first at bat in the first inning of the first game of the 1974 season in Cincinnati, April 4, Jack Billingham—who had already surrendered home runs number 528, 636, 641, and 709 to Henry—threw a sinking fastball that Henry on his first swing of the season, redirected toward the left-center gap and over the fence to tie Ruth. The businessman in Bartholomay saw potential disaster, and Bob Hope’s ulcer-riddled stomach began churning anew. With eight more innings in the opener and two full games remaining in Cincinnati before the Braves went back to Atlanta to play their first home game of the season, Henry could conceivably break the record on the road, in the antiseptic bowl that was Riverfront Stadium, and rob the Braves of at least one sellout home date and possibly more. After the game, Bartholomay would tell his manager, Eddie Mathews, to sit Henry for the remaining two games, which inflamed Kuhn, who ordered Henry to play. The players had never respected Kuhn in the first place. Before the next game, Pete Rose walked to the batting cage and yelled out to Joe Morgan, “Hey, Joe, you playing today? Did you check with the commissioner?”

  Given the kind of reaction Bartholomay would receive, he would have been better off fixing the World Series. The outcry would have been less. When Kuhn stepped in and ordered Henry to play in at least one of the remaining two games, which he would do, that only made matters worse, since Henry had never quite gotten over the commissioner refusing to acknowledge his seven hundredth home run. “For that,” Bartholomay would recall thirty-four years later, “I got really pounded in the press, but I thought our fans deserved to see the record. I thought it was only fair to Hank, after all he went through to have the opportunity to break the record at home.”

  Henry’s ball burned through the crisp Cincinnati air like a comet, over the heads of Billingham, Dave Concepción at short, and Pete Rose in left, before returning to earth somewhere in the seats in left center. Cornered by the press hours later, Billingham would explain his yielding a home run to Henry Aaron with a forlorn inevitability, a guy who had left his umbrella at home during a rainstorm. “I was behind three and one, so I wanted to come to him. Well, I came to him, but it didn’t come like I wanted it to. It didn’t sink. That was a mistake and a mistake to Henry Aaron is a home run.”

  The game was being televised on Channel 17,226 and for the people of Atlanta, Milo Hamilton was on the call.

  Base hit for Lum. He gets the first base hit of the ’74 season. This is the only game today. So Darrell Evans, who last year moved into superstar status—41 home runs, 104 RBIs, he led the club in spring homers with four. Jack Billingham in first inning trouble … walked Garr, Lum got a base hit through the left side with the runner going and pulled the shortstop over. Lum hit it perfectly through the vacated spot…. Darrell Evans the batter with two on as you look down the first base side and Joe Morgan is coming in to talk to Billingham … already on deck is the man of the hour, Henry Aaron. It’s the biggest sports story in a quarter century. One away from the Babe, two to set the all-time new record … two balls and no strikes … the crowd starting to buzz. Could Henry Aaron come to bat with the bases loaded? There’s nobody out, opening inning. A fly ball, left field. Pete Rose waiting … easy play. One out …

  Jack Billingham was already shaken, having slept the night before on a mattress on the basement floor of his home in Delhi, Kentucky, huddled with his wife, Jolene, and his two children, John and Jennifer, as tornadoes ripped through town.

  He would not fall asleep until nearly 3:00 a.m., and when he awoke, he learned that the storms that rattled his house and nerves had already killed five people.

  Now the crowd warming to the introduction of Henry Aaron. Henry Aaron has three spring homers, last year hit 40…. Drove in 96 runs … had a batting average of .301. Steps in
for his first at-bat of the season with two on and one down. You can actually hear a buzz in the crowd. The excitement is here, and Aaron can put on the finishing touch. Ball one … and the disappointment as a groan goes through the 50,000-plus crowd. They want him to be thrown something over the plate…. Checked his swing, missed with a curve ball. Two balls and no strikes … Dignitaries here from all over the country … some 250 writers are here from the sportswriting fraternity…. Stee-rike across the letters on the inside corner … if there’s a seat empty, I can’t find it…. Ball three! Three and one to Henry Aaron … We play three games here. Tomorrow is an open date…. We’ll be home Monday night to open a big homestand with the Dodgers on Monday the eighth. Three-one pitch … THERE’S A DRIVE INTO LEFT FIELD…. THAT BALL IS GOING … GOING … AND OUT OF HERE! HENRY AARON HAS JUST TIED BABE RUTH IN THE ALL-TIME HOME-RUN PARADE….

  Jack Billingham was now, in his words, “salty as hell” as he stood on the mound, crouched at the waist in disgust as Henry rounded the bases, around the dirt cutouts and along the hard artificial turf. Frank Hyland, the Atlanta Journal beat writer, was in the press box, brimming with errata: He noted the time it took Henry to round the bases as sixteen seconds and reported that in his twenty years in the big leagues it was the first home run Henry had hit on opening day, and that the ball was the first ball in the nearly one hundred years of National League play to be made from cowhide. Horsehide was now a relic.

  The game was stopped for six minutes. Vice President Ford took the microphone, and Billingham was frothing. He had not been warned that the game would be halted in the event of a home run by Henry, and now it would take little effort to fry an egg on his head. “Sure, it was irritating. It’s bad enough to throw but then you gotta sit there and watch ’em give away all those trophies and listen to Bowie Kuhn throwing a few words around,” Billingham said. “Seems to me they could have picked a better time to do it, like maybe between innings.”

  Billingham would last five shaky innings, giving up five runs, walking four, then be bounced, with Cincinnati trailing 6–2. The Reds, with their championship pedigree and hunger, plus Pete Rose (three for five, three runs scored) and Joe Morgan (two for four, and a stolen base)—would win the game in eleven innings, 7–6, but afterward Billingham was still boiling.

  “I’m happy for Aaron and all that, and don’t get me wrong. I’m not badmouthing and all that, but it was embarrassing. Hell, it was frustrating enough to have to change balls every time he came up, but then to have to stand out there and go through all that. You don’t know what to do.”

  Henry was removed in the seventh inning for the rookie, Rowland Office. In the eighth inning, a harbinger of Bob Hope’s nightmare was realized. Naked people! A young boy tore off his clothes and ran naked through the aisles of the left-field upper deck to an ovation. He streaked for three minutes before being apprehended by four policemen and forced to dress. He was escorted out of the stadium, but before he was taken away, he received a louder second ovation and signed several autographs.

  The specter of racial tension was never far from the chase, and for the rest of Henry’s life, race would always play a determining role in his memory of that day and his inability to enjoy his accomplishments.

  Before the game, Henry spoke with Jesse Jackson, who suggested that on opening day, with a chance for Henry to tie and perhaps surpass Ruth’s record, the Reds should, as a courtesy, acknowledge the day, April 4, 1974, the sixth anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, with a pregame moment of silence. The Reds were angry and refused, even though the club had asked Henry before the game if there was anything the team could do for him. Cincinnati, better known for its conservatism than its progressiveness in race relations, solidified its reputation with its refusal, as did the Reds.

  “It should not even have been necessary227 to request it,” Billye Aaron would say later about the moment of silence. She would receive ample criticism herself for her politics, and learn a bitter lesson. “After that, I figured I would just keep my mouth shut.”

  ON THE AFTERNOON of April 8, 1974, Henry Aaron was resting at home in southwest Atlanta, lying on his living room sofa, watching The Edge of Night. In his two years of isolation, locked away in hotel rooms, Henry had become familiar with and addicted to soap operas. He also followed As the World Turns, and was somewhat disappointed that one of his favorite diversions, The Secret Storm, had been taken off the air. He had outlived another one. The Secret Storm debuted as a fifteen-minute soap opera on February 1, 1954, on CBS, four days before Henry’s twentieth birthday and a month before he stepped on the field for Milwaukee that first time in Bradenton, and was canceled three days after his fortieth birthday. At 1:00 p.m., Henry slept for a couple of hours, then drove alone to the ballpark, arriving at 4:00 p.m.

  For perhaps the first time during the chase, Henry was calm, uninterrupted by reporters before the game. That was because the Braves (Eddie Mathews, in particular) had decided to violate the standing agreement between the league and the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and close the clubhouse an hour before game time. Usually, the clubhouse was open to the press until thirty minutes before the game began, but Mathews, whose protection of Henry was both “fatherly and brotherly,” according to Bob Hope, decided the writers had asked enough questions for the last two years. Mathews had retired six years earlier but still possessed a ferocious, erratic temper, one that left younger players on edge and gave pause to anyone not seeking immediate confrontation. Earlier, he had been set off by a reporter who asked Henry which shoe, right or left, he put on first each day. “Enough of this goddamned circus,” Mathews roared. Henry thanked his old teammate and told him, “It allowed me to get some of my sanity back.”

  Henry stretched and walked around the clubhouse, and his teammates gave him a wide berth, no one quite willing to initiate a conversation with him. No one knew if Henry wanted to be approached or if he should be treated with total silence, like a pitcher who was throwing a no-hitter. Henry walked over to Garr, who was dressing for the game.

  “Ralph,” Henry said at his locker.228 “I’m gonna break it tonight. I’m tired. I’m going to break the record so we can get down to serious business.”

  “I think you are, Hank,” Garr responded.

  LATER IN THE afternoon, Billye arrived at the ballpark with Herbert and Stella. By the time they took the field, Henry’s parents were surrounded by writers from around the globe, as important to the story as Henry. “I just feel good and happy,229 just to be here and see him this close to it. I saw Babe Ruth play an exhibition game once when he came through Mobile,” Herbert said. While he spoke, the writers were looking for genetic clues in the father’s body that would unlock the gifts of the son. Henry was known for his wrists, but it was Herbert’s wide hands and long, tapered fingers that betrayed some form of athletic bloodline. With his hands, Herbert could have been a pitcher, or a pianist. Amid the crush of photographers and writers and dignitaries, it was not lost on Herbert that until his son grew into manhood, white men were an entity that required careful negotiation. Now he was shaking hands with a sitting president and future ones. Herbert was energetic that day and would spend the rest of his life in the proud position of being a celebrity dad, telling tall tales in the spirit of the moment. “I remember he hit a ball over the fence and into a boxcar. Somebody found it in New Orleans.”

  Henry’s parents were feted as celebrities, pioneers of the American dream. They would sit next to Bill Bartholomay and Governor Carter, who was formulating a bid to rescue a wounded presidency, but amid the festivities, while Herbert offered levity, Stella was too focused on the miles she had traveled and their unique, bitter terrain—her own as much as Henry’s—to be folksy.

  “I’m just proud of the whole black race,” she said to an interviewer. “That’s what I’m really proud of.”

  WALTER ALSTON DID not say a word to his team about the record during the pregame meeting. The Dodgers were a stoic tea
m, unwilling to play the role of stick figures in Henry’s potential night of drama. As was the baseball custom before the first game of any series, the Dodgers went over the Atlanta scouting report with the pitching staff, and Al Downing, the night’s starter, winced at what he perceived to be a whiff of the old racism that had been an insuperable ingredient of baseball soil. With regard to each of the black players in the lineup, the report echoed variations on the same theme, to pitch them in, on the hands. Invariably, someone in the meeting would say, “Garr, he doesn’t like being pitched high and tight,” or “Make sure you crowd Baker. That makes him uncomfortable.” To Downing, the words were another230 insinuation that black players, even twenty-seven years after Robinson’s big-league debut, were somehow less mentally and physically tough than their white counterparts, that black hitters could be intimidated in ways whites could not, that their wills, even after all this time and so much truth to the contrary, were easily broken. He asked himself, Which hitters out there do like to be pitched high and tight? And for the life of him, Downing couldn’t come up with an answer.

  Like Jack Billingham and Henry, Downing and Henry had a history. Downing had surrendered home runs number 676 and 693 to Henry. The two had met eleven years earlier, in Florida during spring training, when Downing was a rookie with the Yankees. Elston Howard, the Yankee catcher, had introduced Downing to Henry, who by that time was already a big star. Henry sized up the young pitcher quietly, shook his hand, before calling out to a reporter for a spare piece of paper and a pen. Henry scribbled quickly on the paper and handed it to Downing. “If there’s anything I can ever do for you,”231 Henry told Downing that day, “give me a call. Good luck to you.”