In baseball, it is interesting to see just how detached and out of context 56 game hitting streaks, batting .400, or hitting 715 home runs can be. Time passes, and 715 becomes just that, a number, a record, another statistic. But the years, days, games, innings, and home runs leading up to that stat, are what makes the number really sing. Tom Stanton's new book, "Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America" powerfully reminds us of just that.
To tell the tale of Hank Aaron surpassing Babe Ruth as the greatest home run hitter of all time, Stanton weaves a complex narrative that begins with the death of Jackie Robinson in 1972 and ends with Aaron hitting that famed 715th home run in 1974. While the country focused on the front page scandals of Watergate and the end of Vietnam, Aaron did what he did best, play ball.
Stanton makes a compelling, and beautifully written biographical account of how Hank Aaron got to 714. Stanton does a good job of comparing Aaron to the home run ghost. Contrasted against the legendary prowess of Ruth, Aaron "seemed as plain as raisin-less oatmeal. Reporters could spend days with him in hopes of discovering a telling detail that might capture the essence of the man or provide a bit of color to bring him to life for readers (or at least make him more interesting)."
Aaron was the total opposite of Ruth. He, "didn't gulp six hot dogs at a sitting or mix a dish of Ma Gehrig's pickled eels with chocolate ice cream or go on drinking binges or wear full-length camel-hair coats or appear in movies or in Vaudeville or spend his nights cavorting with a half-dozen showgirls, staying out until dawn."
The only thing the two men really shared was an uncanny ability to drive baseballs out of the park. But even their style of hitting homers was different. Where Ruth's homers were mammoth, almost dramatic, shots, Aarons were simple line drives, sometimes barely making it over the fence. It was probably in this regard that it seemed like, under the radar, Aaron literally snuck up on Ruth's home run record.
Beginning the tale with death of the man who broke the color barrier in baseball wasn't done for dramatic effect. It was Jackie Robinson who, in his later years, had befriended Aaron and actually prepared him for the onslaught that would come as he approached the record. And it was Robinson and other early black players that helped Aaron focus on trying to unseat the beloved Ruth. "By shattering the home-run mark, Aaron would show there were no limits to the achievements of black players. He would slam an exclamation point on the accomplishments of his predecessors, and maybe, like Jackie Robinson, impact the larger world."
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