Baby Got Books

The Last Hero

On the heels of Dr J’s excellent post delving into the DeLillo archives to research “Pafko at the Wall” and the two big baseball news stories yesterday (the death of Bobby Thomson and the new medical paper that suggests that Lou Gehrig may not have died of the disease that bears his name), it seems appropriate that I finally get around to posting about one of the best baseball books I’ve read: The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron by Howard Bryant.

If you’re not from Atlanta or Milwaukee, maybe you haven’t thought of Hank Aaron in awhile. Here in Atlanta though, Henry Aaron is difficult to miss. Hank Aaron Drive is a walking distance from my house. A visit to Turner Field yields virtually unlimited references to number 44. Hank Aaron owns several car dealerships in town (I once bought a car from Hank! Well, not Hank exactly…). Hank Aaron also remains active in our city and in baseball, often serving as a spokesman for both. It’s clear that the man long-ago reached hero status in this town.

Bryant’s previous book, Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston, addressed the slow path to integration taken by the Boston Red Sox. Last Hero focuses on racial issues, too, in explaining the man Henry Aaron. The book traces Aaron’s journey from the Jim Crow south to the pinnacle of American sport, where he was not always welcome. Along the way, Bryant highlights how Aaron was shaped by his experience and how his outward expression of those experiences shaped how he was perceived by others, often to his detriment.

Aaron’s number 44 has been retired at Turner Field

The book begins before the beginning, in 1884, with the birth of the first Henry, Aaron’s grandfather in the rural post-slavery south in a geographically isolated corner of lower Alabama called Gee’s Bend. Henry’s father Herbert left Gee’s Bend for the relative prosperity of Mobile, Alabama. Bryant describes what racial segregation was like for the young Henry Aaron. It was a time when a boy going to the grocery store would watch as white people would cut in front of his father at the checkout store line and societal norms dictated that Herbert would have to endure the public insult in silence. Bryant points to these daily humiliations of segregation as formative in the psyche of Henry Aaron and the man that he would become.

Henry is soon discovered by a scout while in high school playing for a local team made up mostly of adults. Major League Baseball was newly integrated at this time, but he was signed by the Indianapolis Clowns, a Negro League team. Aaron would be the last Major Leaguer to begin his career in the soon to be defunct Negro League. His stay in the Negro Leagues was short-lived. He moved on to the minor leagues, playing first in the South Atlantic League, and eventually making it to the big club, the expansion team Milwaukee Braves. While his rise through the ranks was in some ways meteoric, Bryant points out the indignities that Aaron endured at each step.

Coincidence? Aaron’s 755 home runs is also the address of Turner Field

In the South Atlantic League, which Aaron integrated, he was greeted in many cities with the worst kind of racial epithets. Of course, he was also unable to lodge with his team mates in the integrated south. Even after escaping the South Atlantic League for the big club in Milwaukee, racism was persistent. During spring training Henry Aaron and the other black Braves players were not allowed to lodge at the beach side resort where the white players stayed with their families, staying instead at a lodging house in the black part of town. The black players were assigned lockers together that were separate from the white players and were expected to shower separately. Despite being a star player for the Milwaukee Braves, Aaron was expected to live within the boundaries of the tightly controlled black part of town in his early years.

Despite these injustices, Aaron was expected by the media to have a “just glad to be here” attitude. Media reports of the day would describe the young Aaron as quiet, aloof, and bitter. Charges that would stick to him throughout his career. Aaron had never finished high school and had a southern accent, so he was often portrayed as a simpleton. The legendary AJC sportswriter Furman Bisher penned a high-profile magazine piece on Aaron that quoted the slugger in phonetic “dialect” that would go a long way in cementing this view of Aaron. The press also routinely compared him to the much flashier and media-savvy Willie Mays, usually to Aaron’s detriment. In the face of this public criticism, Aaron became determined to let his playing do the talking and to be among the best that ever played the game.

All that’s left of the outfield wall of the old Fulton County Stadium where Aaron sent record breaking 715 into the stands

As an Atlanta Braves fan, I found it interesting that Aaron wanted no part of the team’s move from Milwaukee to Atlanta. He feared that he would be forced to backtrack on the relative racial equality that he had scratched out for his family in Milwaukee. It was also an interesting side note that Atlanta’s progressive civic boosters desperately wanted Hank Aaron and the Braves to serve as a center piece of their “City to busy to hate” marketing campaign.

The historic chase of Babe Ruth’s record and the racially-charged death threats that Aaron received is well documented, but it underscores the difficulty Aaron would always have in simply being allowed to enjoy the game. When Aaron ultimately retired, he found that the expected jobs in the front office or managing within the ranks of the organization were not forthcoming. His reputation as being embittered would once again stand in his way. Interestingly, it would be Bud Selig, a long-time friend from the Milwaukee days, who would be instrumental in finally reconciling Aaron with Major League Baseball. It’s only relatively recently, Bryant notes, that Henry Aaron has found peace with himself and with the game.

If my enthusiasm for this book has not been self-evident so far, let me be clear: this is an incredible book. It is guaranteed to appeal to any fan of the Braves in particular or baseball history in general. Henry Aaron’s life-long struggle with institutional racism and a game that never really let him just be himself is an epic story of heroism. The Last Hero does that story incredible justice and deserves a wide audience. It should be mandatory reading in Atlanta public schools. But you should check it out, too.

Books, Non-Fiction, Review | Tim | August 18, 2010 11:10 am

9 Comments

By Shaft, August 18, 2010 @ 12:11 pm

The Lou Gehrig story reminds me of a joke: A guy goes to the doctor, and after examining him, the doctor says, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.” The guy says, “Well, let’s start with the good news.” So the doctor says, “You’re going to have a disease named after you!”
By Dr J, August 18, 2010 @ 12:54 pm

I’ve always thought that Aaron and his cohort deserved more credit for desegregating minor league baseball, especially in the Deep South. I hope it doesn’t take anything away from Jackie Robinson to point out that being the first black to play alongside whites in places like Jacksonville and Savannah was even harder than being the first black to play in places like Philadelphia and St. Louis.
By Dr J, August 18, 2010 @ 12:55 pm

P.S. I’ve bought a doughnut from Mr. Aaron, and I have a son named Henry. Trump card?
By Anne, August 18, 2010 @ 2:50 pm

Tim – has Hank Aron come up while discussing Heroes with your daughter?
By Tim, August 18, 2010 @ 3:56 pm

Yes! When I found out the class was doing a heroes unit, we went to Turner Field and had a history lesson. That’s where the pictures in this post came from.
By Anne, August 18, 2010 @ 9:52 pm

Would you mind adopting my kid for this unit? She refuses to talk about heroes with me.
By Frank, August 19, 2010 @ 2:54 pm

Great post, Tim, and gets me psyched to read this book, which is in the “on deck” position on my nightstand. Appropriately enough, my older son, Henry — who’s named after you-know-who — gave it to me for Father’s Day. Little does he know that I’m going to make him read it when I’m done.