By Andy Loigu

Just a couple of minutes after Henry “Hank” Aaron hit career home run number 715 to pass Babe Ruth as the all-time home run king, my telephone rang.

“Did you see it, did you see it?” asked my excited older brother, who had been telling everyone that Aaron was his favorite player for a dozen years. He was no bandwagon jumper. “This guy has a smooth swing that gets to the ball quick, it’s in the wrists,” he kept telling me. “He’s going to be one of the all-time greats.”

He loved the story Yogi Berra told, that when Hank came to bat in the 1957 World Series, Yogi told Aaron he should be holding the bat at an angle where he can read the label. “Didn’t come here to read,” he said to Yogi. That turned out to be typical Aaron. He answered everybody’s questions, was a gentleman at all times, but got to the point without any excess verbiage or drama. 

At the time that Aaron, who passed away on Friday morning, approached and passed Babe Ruth’s long held career home runs record, he was receiving torrents of vitriolic, racially directed hate mail, including an alarming number of death threats.

Had Ruth still been alive, he most likely would have admonished those people to stop it, and would have made a public display of inviting Hank to a New York hotspot to have a beer.

I was a young sports editor with Phillies media credentials in the mid ’70s and never got a chance to get into any conversation with Aaron. All the media made demands of Aaron and when the Braves were in town, they got more media members in the house than even the Cincinnati Reds, who were the best team in baseball at the time.

Aaron spoke to reporters in groups, at hurriedly arranged press conferences, and the pertinent questions all got asked before I got my chance. It was humbling just to be in the same room with him. I was a lot bigger than him, but he was swinging the most prolific home run bat in the sport and I was just carrying a pen and a clipboard. It isn’t the size of the player that matters in baseball. It is the size of his talent, skill, tenacity, and persistence. 

Aaron showed humor and humility about reaching the 3,000 hits milestone: “It took me 20 years to do it in baseball, but just one day on the golf course,” he joked.  

Joe Torre was Aaron’s teammate with the old Milwaukee Braves, usually following Aaron in the lineup in the number five spot. He had nice things to say about Aaron on the news shows, mainly that Hank was “a good teammate” and was not flashy. If Aaron had played in a “big market” like New York, he would have had a lot more fame and adulation.

One thing I can say, with all due respect, is that Aaron had trouble hitting Steve Carlton’s slider. Well, Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Steve Garvey, all had trouble with that nasty slider. I remember when Rose bunted his way on against Carlton, and said, “that’s the only way I can hit the guy.”

I did get to chat with Dick Allen, the Phillies slugger who passed a few months ago. He praised Aaron for doing what he did, down in Atlanta. (Allen had played Triple-A baseball in Little Rock, Arkansas, and, after that harrowing experience, never wanted to play for a team in the South ever again.)

Rest in peace Henry Aaron. Another baseball Hall of Famer, an elite Hall of Famer at that, has been taken from us. His next homer will land in that Field of Dreams cornfield in Iowa.

Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.