Ruth's career, and home run record, certainly was beneficial to the business of baseball, reviving interest, driving up attendance, and some would even argue saving the sport from the disaster of the 1919 Black Sox scandal. When the fans finally begun to take notice, and as we look back now, Aaron's chase of that record was beneficial culturally. He was besieged by nasty and racist hate mail of all kinds, death threats, and even the snubbing of the commissioner of baseball. But to his credit, Aaron remained a class act. "His ordeal provided a vivid, personal lesson for a generation of children: Racism is wrong. Through his impact on those children of the early 1970's, and, indirectly, on their children of the 1980's and 1990's, Hank Aaron cleared a path of the Michael Jordans and Tiger Woodses of the sporting world."

As Stanton places Aaron's 715th home run into context, the intersections of that feat with the wider culture are unmistakable. Just as Terence Mann, the character played by James Earl Jones in the movie "Field of Dreams", would say, "The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again."

Baseball has done far more than mark the time. As Tom Stanton tells it, baseball has been changed by, and in turn changed, the world beyond its ballparks. Stanton demonstrates his skill as a writer by bringing an enthusiastic appreciation and a fan's passion to the back story behind the statistic known as Hank Aaron's 715th home run.

Jackson Murphy is a commentator from Vancouver, Canada. He is a senior writer at Enter Stage Right and the editor of "Dispatches" a website that serves up political commentary 24-7.