Article by Will Manzi, Great Bay Community College student/intern
I’d like to honor Hank Aaron today. On the field, Aaron was one of the greatest hitters to ever walk the earth. Despite this, his off the field impact bears a far greater impact.
Aaron played at a time when society viewed him, and anybody else that was born black, as an animal. He was degraded, saw his life regularly threatened, was discriminated against and subjected to relentless, racially charged profanity everywhere he went.
Have you ever had a death threat delivered to your door? How about hundreds of them?
As he started to approach Babe Ruth’s career home run record, Hank had to have someone go through his mail for him and get rid of all the negative ones.
Nonetheless, he kept on swinging.
Aaron was extraordinarily talented, and that’s likely the only reason he was given a chance to achieve what he did in the MLB. Average non-white players couldn’t make it in baseball, they wouldn’t last. The work of Hank and all the other groundbreakers responsible for breaking down MLB’s color barrier has inspired generations of fans from all backgrounds that they can be a ballplayer too. They don’t even have to think about whether or not their skin color disqualifies them.
The challenge of making the big leagues is far more practical now, free of the unnecessary restraints faced by Aaron. That a black man can make the MLB just as well as a white man can is a sign of tremendous progress as a nation.
Hank met Martin Luther King Jr. during his career, and was considerably impacted by his example. By fighting for what he believed in when many tried to silence his voice, King showed the soft spoken, often reserved Aaron how to speak up for himself.
They were friends. They were two men on different paths, both paving the way for unprecedented change. Equality was the common denominator between them.
For this they were vilified by the public, which was not ready to let the capable black man into the white man’s world. How could America be ready to dethrone Babe Ruth as home run king, and replace him with Hank Aaron, when it was harldy ready to accept desegregated water fountains?
This was the world Aaron lived in. Nonetheless—WHAM. He kept on swinging.
WHAM. WHACK. SMASH. All the way up the all time leaderboards. Swing, swing, swing. Just keep swinging.
No obstacle in his life was too tall to overcome, and no wall was too tall to keep his ball in the yard. His impact will be felt forever. Every time someone is told they can’t, Hank’s body of work testifies against that notion from the history books. Loud and clear.
