It wasn’t so bad – we tend to sanitize the
past in order to play to our sense of nostalgia, and so overlook the fact that
the marchers often got their heads beat in, that getting a draft card could
very well mean you got, you know, drafted and sent to Vietnam, that
dropping acid and listening to Sgt. Pepper on day one might lead to a bad trip
– so that you could never listen to “When I’m Sixty-Four” without
breaking out in a cold sweat and wanting to hide in the bathroom.
And they play that song a lot.
Instead, those of us who were late boomers had
a different set of generational milestones by which to measure our
childhoods. Our parents, aunts, uncles,
older siblings and cousins had Elvis or the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, the Mickey
Mouse Club, Howdy Doody, a whole series of assassinations, hell – those guys
got the first seven (out of nine) verses of “We Didn’t Start the Fire”.
Even then, when Billy Joel got to our time growing up he missed most of
the biggies. Are you seriously telling
me Pasternak gets a mention but nothing rhymed with “Rumble in the Jungle”,
“Thrilla in Manila” or “Vader is Luke’s dad”?
What about “terrorist Olympiad”?
Billy Joel may have blanked on our actual
milestones – but we did have them. Hell,
there was one stretch of less than a year where John Lennon, Ronald Reagan,
Pope John Paul II and Anwar Sadat all got shot. Of course, not every milestone is predicated upon violence. I actually prefer that we measure our childhood by Fridays with the
Brady’s and Partridge Family and not evenings with Lucy and Ricky or rigged
quiz shows. Here are a few more of the
pre-teen experiences that were big deals for my crowd – to keep things simple
we’ll just concentrate on one year - 1974:
Evel Knievel attempts to jump the Snake
River canyon: -This was a huge event in the
sixth grade. Knievel wanted to try to
jump the Grand Canyon but the government blocked the attempt so now he was
going to take a rocket cycle and jump the Idaho canyon. The week we all got back to school the
daredevil went for it – only to have the cycle’s chute deploy prematurely and
leave him wet but alive in the water at the bottom of the gorge. Did he pull the handle himself? We’ll never know… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5LdesoNFpY
Patty Hearst gets kidnapped and then
joins up with her kidnappers: - The Symbionese
Liberation Army snatched the heiress in February and by April she was
participating in bank robberies while holding a gun. It remains possibly the weirdest kidnapping
story of all time and it still isn’t clear to what extent Hearst was brainwashed
or just decided she was going to join up with her captors.
Philippe Petit walks on a highwire
between the twin towers of the World Trade Center: This
was amazing to watch and has remained a fascination for many. At the time I
remember flipping the channel from newscast to newscast wondering first how he
did it and then, along with many others, how did he ever get all the stuff up
on the roof to make it happen. The Oscar winning documentary “Man on a Wire”
examines just this one event in detail – I highly recommend it. I only wish this was still the thing that the
towers remain best known for.
There
were all of these in 1974, plus the Nixon resignation, the aforementioned
“Rumble in the Jungle” and many other events besides. America was ramping up for
its bicentennial (it’s hard to believe we’re now only five years out from the
250th celebration, which will teach many the term “Sestercentennial”
for the first time) and, in the nearer term there was a Presidential election
scheduled for 1976. An obscure Georgia
politician, Jimmy Carter, announced his candidacy at the end of 1974, but no
one seriously believed he would win. Indeed,
Carter’s announcement certainly wasn’t the biggest news out of Georgia that
year.
No, the biggest story out of Georgia in 1974
was that of Henry Aaron, who passed Babe Ruth for the all-time home run record
in April, just at the beginning of that year’s baseball schedule. There had never really been any doubt that
Aaron would break the record during this season – after all he had come into
the year sitting on 713 home runs and would need only two more to get the job
done. Given that Aaron had been
averaging 40 home runs or so per season for about the past 15 years this,
barring unforeseen circumstances, was not going to be a problem.
“Barring unforeseen circumstances”.
That seems a fairly benign statement. To tell the truth – it should be. You include something like that in most all
predictive declarations, particularly when the possibility is seen as
remote. Let me demonstrate by giving a
few simple examples. “Barring unforeseen
circumstances” the Covid vaccine will not be available to all people in time
for the 2021 celebration of St. Patrick’s Day.
In this case the unforeseen event would have to be something like the
discovery that it is possible to quickly produce the vaccine in powder form so
that it can be mixed up and taken like Kool-Aid. “Barring unforeseen circumstances” Rory
McIlroy would beat me in a head to head golf match. Such circumstances might include Rory having
to wear oven mitts on his hands. Okay –
Rory having to wear oven mitts and being blindfolded. Another example - one of the television shows
on the air in 1974 was “The Partridge Family”, nearing the end of its run. Susan Dey was one of the stars and it is safe
to say that 1974 me would, “barring unforeseen circumstances” never sleep with
Susan Dey. Those unforeseen
circumstances would have to include advanced puberty and the death of every
other man on earth.
You get the picture.
The problem with applying that saying to Henry Aaron’s quest to break Babe Ruth’s record is that - while from a purely statistical baseball perspective it would have been as unlikely an event as my bedding Ms. Dey for him not to become the home run king – there were other elements at play that might have made such an outcome tragically foreseeable.
Aaron’s journey to reach and break the home
run record is both one of baseball’s most uplifting tales and, simultaneously,
one of America’s most shameful.
Throughout 1973 and leading up to the opening of the 1974 baseball
season media attention crystallised around the upcoming event. Along with the publicity came the nuts – and
there were legions of them. Every racist
in America seemed to feel it was their sworn duty to send Henry Aaron a letter
telling him how disgraceful it was that a Black man was approaching the
“sacred” record of Babe Ruth, how horrible it was to have to tell children that
this was taking place and how that outcome might be avoided by eliminating
Aaron before it took place. (By the way,
take a glance through the sampling of attached letters – as you might have
guessed they weren’t calling him a “Black man”). Seriously – people were threatening to kill
Hank Aaron because he was good at baseball.
And because he was Black.
I think it’s really important not to forget
that that those two things went together in the racist, hate filled minds of
those who were writing such letters or phoning those threats. I’m not so naïve as to think that the people
writing and sending those messages would have thought Henry Aaron was a great guy
if he had only been black and not also incredibly talented – but I’m pretty
sure they wouldn’t take the time to threaten to kill him. Of course – if he had been talented and White
they would have lionized him. But what
brought things to the next level was that, in their eyes, Aaron had the
presumption to be both Black and talented. That just didn’t compute in their
narrow world views and therefore could not be allowed.
You still see examples of that mind set to
this day. If Barack Obama had simply
been good old Barry, a black kid who went to law school and took a job
somewhere on Wall Street – that’d be OK.
Of course, that wasn’t the path he took. If he’d been a white guy who
headed up the Harvard Law Review, wowed the Democratic National Convention, got
himself elected Senator, took on and beat Hillary Clinton and became President
– there still would have been the usual partisan bickering – but I’ll tell you
right now – no one would have been demanding to see his birth certificate.
But none of these harsh truths were known
to my ten-year old self back in April of 1974.
All I knew was that I was a baseball fanatic, Aaron was about to break
the record and I wanted to see it happen.
In March my grandfather brought me to the newsagent’s shop where he
picked up his daily papers and saw me leafing through the 1974 edition of the
“Complete Handbook of Baseball”. Despite
it having what, to me, seemed the exorbitant price of $1.50, he bought it for
me. I have it to this day and will
sometimes find myself leafing through its pages to see what may have been
written about various teams, players or statistics. For a baseball nut having something like that
book is fascinating – a window into the past.
There are all kinds of quirky things in there – like how the Red Sox
were deemed to have “possibly the best pitching staff in the division” in 1974
(nope), or how “Mike Tyson” was considered to be the Cardinals' answer at shortstop.
(Presumably no relation).
But really what I bought the book for was the material concerning Aaron and his drive for 715. There was an article setting out which pitchers he had victimized the most times throughout his career (the leader was Don Drysdale – a Hall of Fame pitcher himself, showing just how good Aaron was). Then there was the small bio within the Atlanta Brave team pages. It listed the following about Aaron: “Man of even temperament and uncommon patience”.
He would have to be to put up with the shit
that was being thrown at him. Things got
so bad that the FBI designated people to monitor Aaron and his family. Guards were assigned to look at the higher
vantage points at the various stadia where the Braves might play in order to
intercept potential snipers. Even in his
home park Aaron was subjected to racist abuse.
He played on, hitting an incredible 40 home runs in the face of all the
pressure at 39 years old. That number
left him at the aforementioned 713 as he entered the 1974 season – needing one
to tie Ruth and two to break the record.
First – he had to get through the winter, as the threatening phone calls
persisted and the hate mail piled up.
While there were whisperings in the press I
was aware of none of this as I read through the book I had purchased and
readied for opening day. All I really knew is that the record was sitting there waiting to be broken. It didn’t take
Aaron long to show that the haters hadn’t gotten to him. On his first swing of the '74 season he hit a
monster home run to reach the previously magic number of 714. The nation waited a few more days, then, on
Aaron’s return to his home park in Atlanta, this happened:
I remember flipping stations just to watch
the highlight replay wherever I could.
It wasn’t that hard – we only got three channels back then – but the
scene was shown numerous times over the next few days and was burned into
memory. The pitch coming in, Aaron
waiting on it until he seems to pounce on the high fastball, whipping
the bat around with his tremendously strong wrists. Aaron’s swing was like very few others – he
could wait on a pitch until it was almost past him and then quickly bring the
bat around at the last possible second.
There was nothing to really compare it to. I knew that he had originally learned to hit
in a manner that is known in America as “cross-handed” with the dominant right
hand below the left, instead of the more common baseball grip that had the
right on top. He later changed that
around but retained many of the characteristics of the manner in which he originally
learned to hit. It wasn’t until I moved to Ireland that I realised that there was
a comparison for Aaron’s swing. He had developed
his game with what is known over here as a “hurling grip” – right-handed
players in that sport keep the right hand lower in order to give them more
reach and strength with their hurl. This
results in their swing being shorter, quicker and “wristier” than a baseball
swing (which is required due to the need to get the ball off before a defender
can whack it out of your hand). Aaron’s
swing looks like that of the typical hurler – because that’s how he taught
himself – short, quick, powerful.
The highlights would show the homerun again
and again, along with Aaron circling the bases as two fans come out of the
stands to congratulate him between second and third base. Henry brushes them off – perhaps saving them
from a violent end as there were armed officers in the stadium who could have
mistaken them for someone attempting to follow through on the threats against
the ballplayer’s life. Happily, no one made
such an attempt and as Vin Scully, one of the announcers that day, put it;
“What a great day for the nation – a Black man is getting a standing ovation in
the deep South”. That was true – but it
masked the hell that Aaron had gone through in the months preceding the event.
A few months later I found myself back in
the newsagent’s shop with my grandfather and he once more bought me a book I
had been leafing through. It was called
“Hank Aaron – The Man Who Beat the Babe” – and it cost the somewhat lower
amount of $1.25. My grandfather loved to
read and did all he could to engender the same practice in myself – and that
was a lesson that took. I still have a
good few of the books he bought or bequeathed to me, but this one holds a
special place, for it was the one that I think first started to wake me up to
what “racism” was – and why it was wrong.
Honestly, there was no reason to think that
it would do so. The work was one of
those “quicky” publications that typically get commissioned right after a big
event. These are usually very formulaic
– they tell the story of how the subject grew up obeying his parents, applied
himself dutifully to his task, appreciates his fans, loves his country, remains
humble and concludes with, essentially, a newspaper account of the big event
itself. The work is rushed onto shelves
while there are still headlines to capitalize upon and sells copies on the back
of all that free publicity.
There was no reason to think this book
would be different – but it was.
Musick wasn’t Shakespeare, but he could
write and he was honest. That honesty
shone through in the Aaron book, which was far above the typical quicky
release. He talked of Aaron’s
upbringing, yes, but did not sugar coat it.
He described the hate mail, the abuse from the stands, Aaron’s struggles
with Atlanta and its racist past, the outspoken advocacy for Blacks to advance into
front office jobs and not just be treated as “field hands” (this struggle
continues), the hypocrisy of baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn who tried to
dictate where Aaron could play and then didn’t bother to show up for the
record-breaking event that represented one of his sport’s greatest moments. There
were discussions about money, the elusiveness of fame, the difference between
flash and substance, the allegation that Aaron wasn’t “Black enough” – real
issues. Musick did not dwell on platitudes but related Aaron speaking frankly
about how hard it was for him – and how wrong it was for it to have been
that hard. The book was a wake-up call for a ten-year old kid and I began to
understand that there was more to Aaron’s achievement than simply hitting lots
of home runs. It is not too much of a
stretch to say that reading that book started to open my eyes to a world beyond
the playing field. I mean – how could
someone want to kill Hank Aaron for hitting home runs while Black? I bought the book because I watched Hammerin’
Hank, the baseball icon, and reacted as a fan.
After reading the book I began to admire Henry Aaron, the man, and
reacted as a student of the game – “the game” being something more than
baseball. I’m glad I still have that
book. Thank you Phil Musick.
Over the past year I have found myself
returning to the pages of that other book, the 1974 players guide, many times,
for a sobering reason. Since the start
of 2020 an unusually high number of notable baseball players have passed away –
many of them being players from that era, players I grew up watching and
admiring.
Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, Joe Morgan, Dick
Allen, Bob Gibson, Phil Niekro, Don Sutton – all those guys (and more) were
featured in that book and passed in just the last 12 months. Then, last week, Henry Aaron joined that
team. The replays of the magic moment
again appeared on screen, the vision of that amazing swing reappeared and I
reached for the bookshelf, pulled down both the guide and Musick’s work to try
to remember what it was like in 1974, absent Watergate, absent Patty Hearst or
Evel Knievel, just to remember what it was like to hold a flashlight towards a
book long after I should have been asleep and read about someone who aspired to
be the best – and then achieved it.
While flipping back through I found this quote, that maybe tells
something about how Henry Aaron was able to persevere through all the hate, the
pressure, the negativity:
“I’ve learned that when you don’t say
anything people think you are satisfied.
I’m not talking about being violent or militant. I’m talking about standing up for what’s
right”.
Rest in peace Henry Aaron. Thank you for standing up.
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