Of course, Hank Aaron’s incredible Major League Baseball career was filled with so many accomplishments beyond breaking Babe Ruth’s record for most career home runs in 1974 — 25 All-Star appearances, an MVP, two batting titles and a World Series win in 1957.
But it was that home run that was more than just a statistical achievement: Aaron received death threats and heard from racists around the country who didn’t want to see a Black man break a hallowed record owned by a white man. He held on to those horrifying letters even 40 years later, as he said to USA TODAY Sports in 2014, to remind himself “that we are not that far removed from when I was chasing the record.”
What a moment it was, both for baseball and beyond. Here’s the radio call:
And the call from the great Vin Scully:
“It really made me see for the first time a clear picture of what this country is about,” he once told the New York Times about his pursuit of the home run title. “My kids had to live like they were in prison because of kidnap threats, and I had to live like a pig in a slaughter camp. I had to duck. I had to go out the back door of the ball parks. I had to have a police escort with me all the time. I was getting threatening letters every single day. All of these things have put a bad taste in my mouth, and it won’t go away. They carved a piece of my heart away.”
By the way, those two fans who jumped in and congratulated him (can’t imagine that happening now, can you?) were Britt Gaston and Cliff Courtenay, who reunited with Aaron in 2010, decades after their arrest before charges were dropped.
