R.I.P. Hank Aaron

Hofers taking a hit.... Brock lasorda Aaron whitey Seaver neikro Morgan ....that's just off the top of my head, I'm sure I missed some

Thanks Hank

RIP 

RIP Hank.

Fuck Barry Bonds

 

 

rip hammerin hank 

I was 10 when Hank Aaron broke the Babe's record.  As a youngster just starting to follow the sport he was and is an icon.

I believe the march to 715 was a two-season event and occupied a space in the news cycle for some time.

When the Braves came to town in that era it was all the talk.

RIP

RIP Hank! You were the one...

Great photo Dave. --- I got to see him play at Candlestick in the 60's. -- Kinda cool to see him and McCovey and Mays on the same field. - We were lucky. -- RIP Henry.

I believe the march to 715 was a two-season event>>>

I ran home from Jr High for the Reds series, an exception was made for the home run chase, and the afternoon games were put on national TV.

The Atlanta Braves opened the 1974 season in Cincinnati. Aaron was expected to sit the entire series out so he could tie and break Ruth’s record in Atlanta, but MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn intervened and said Aaron needed to play at least two of the three games. Aaron only needed one swing on April 4, 1974, to tie Ruth’s home run record.

Hank Aaron didn’t hit another home run against the Reds. However, he broke Ruth’s record when Atlanta opened its 1974 home slate against the Los Angeles Dodgers four days later.

Interesting life of the guy that caught #715.... Relief pitcher Tom House

House and Hank Aaron were both members of the Braves in 1974, the season when Aaron broke Babe Ruth's record for career home runs. Aaron hit the record-setting 715th home run in the fourth inning of a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, on April 8, 1974, against pitcher Al Downing. The ball landed in the Braves' bullpen in left-center field, where it was caught on the fly by House. Bill Buckner, then the Dodgers' left fielder, climbed to the top of the fence and begged House for the ball. The game stopped to celebrate the achievement, and after sprinting to the infield, House presented the ball to Aaron at home plate. His only payment was a TV given by a local store

House has been called the "father of modern pitching mechanics," and a "professor of throwing." House was one of the first to blend scientific based pitching study into methodologies for pitchers. He has led elite coaching to become scientific instead of guesswork. He has developed a model that is focused on quantifying the movement in each athlete's motion, then using drills and exercises to maximize accuracy and velocity and minimize strain on player's bodies

House has admitted to using anabolic steroids in the 1970s making him one of the earliest players to admit to using performance-enhancing drugs. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, he described his use of steroids as "a failed experiment", although he increased from around 190 pounds to around 220 while using them. He viewed the experience as a failure since the extra muscle did not enhance his substandard 82-MPH fastball, while the drugs contributed to knee problems.

House has worked with several NFL quarterbacks, including, Dak Prescott Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Alex Smith, Carson Palmer, Cody Kessler, Matt Cassel, Jared Goff, Marcus Mariota, Andrew Luck, Jimmy Garoppolo, Carson Wentz, Terrelle Pryor, Tim Tebow, Andy Dalton, Blake Bortles, and Matt Ryan.

 

When Baseball Mattered
By Hank Aaron
April 13, 1997, New York Times

Jackie Robinson meant everything to me.

Before I was a teen-ager, I was telling my father that I was going to be a ballplayer, and he was telling me, ''Ain't no colored ballplayers.'' Then Jackie broke into the Brooklyn Dodgers lineup in 1947, and Daddy never said that again. When the Dodgers played an exhibition game in Mobile, Ala., on their way north the next spring, Daddy even came to the game with me. A black man in a major-league uniform: that was something my father had to see for himself.

Jackie not only showed me and my generation what we could do, he also showed us how to do it. By watching him, we knew that we would have to swallow an awful lot of pride to make it in the big leagues. We knew of the hatred and cruelty Jackie had to quietly endure from the fans and the press and the anti-integrationist teams like the Cardinals and the Phillies and even from his teammates. We also knew that he didn't subject himself to all that for personal benefit. Why would he choose to get spiked and cursed at and spat on for his own account?

Jackie was a college football hero, a handsome, intelligent, talented guy with a lot going for him. He didn't need that kind of humiliation. And it certainly wasn't in his nature to suffer it silently. But he had to. Not for himself, but for me and all the young black kids like me. When Jackie Robinson loosened his fist and turned the other cheek, he was taking the blows for the love and future of his people.

Now, 50 years later, people are saying that Jackie Robinson was an icon, a pioneer, a hero. But that's all they want to do: say it.

Nobody wants to be like Jackie. Everybody wants to be like Mike. They want to be like Deion, like Junior.

That's O.K. Sports stars are going to be role models in any generation. I'm sure Jackie would be pleased to see how well black athletes are doing these days, how mainstream they've become. I'm sure he would be proud of all the money they're making. But I suspect he'd want to shake some of them until the dollar signs fell from their eyes so they could once again see straight.

Jackie Robinson was about leadership. When I was a rookie with the Braves and we came north with the Dodgers after spring training, I sat in the corner of Jackie's hotel room, thumbing through magazines, as he and his black teammates -- Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Junior Gilliam and Joe Black -- played cards and went over strategy: what to do if a fight broke out on the field; if a pitcher threw at them; if somebody called one of them ''nigger.''

In his later years, after blacks were secure in the game, Jackie let go of his forbearance and fought back. In the quest to integrate baseball, it was time for pride to take over from meekness. And Jackie made sure that younger blacks like myself were soldiers in the struggle.

When I look back at the statistics of the late 1950's and 60's and see the extent to which black players dominated the National League (the American League was somewhat slower to integrate), I know why that was. We were on a mission. And, although Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson, Willie Stargell, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson and I were trying to make our marks individually, we understood that we were on a collective mission. Jackie Robinson demonstrated to us that, for a black player in our day and age, true success could not be an individual thing.

To players today, however, that's exactly what it is. The potential is certainly there, perhaps more than at any time since Jackie came along, for today's stars to have a real impact on their communities. Imagine what could be accomplished if the players, both black and white, were to really dedicate themselves -- not just their money, although that would certainly help -- to camps and counseling centers and baseball programs in the inner city.

Some of the players have their own charitable foundations, and I applaud them for that. (I believe Dave Winfield, for instance, is very sincere.) But as often as not these good works are really publicity stunts. They're engineered by agents, who are acting in the interest of the player's image -- in other words, his marketability. Players these days don't do anything without an agent leading them every step of the way (with his hand out). The agent, of course, could care less about Jackie Robinson.

The result is that today's players have lost all concept of history. Their collective mission is greed. Nothing else means much of anything to them. As a group, there's no discernible social conscience among them; certainly no sense of self-sacrifice, which is what Jackie Robinson's legacy is based on. It's a sick feeling, and one of the reasons I've been moving further and further away from the game.

The players today think that they're making $10 million a year because they have talent and people want to give them money. They have no clue what Jackie went through on their behalf, or Larry Doby or Monte Irvin or Don Newcombe, or even, to a lesser extent, the players of my generation. People wonder where the heroes have gone. Where there is no conscience, there are no heroes.

The saddest thing about all of this is that baseball was once the standard for our country. Jackie Robinson helped blaze the trail for the civil rights movement that followed. The group that succeeded Jackie -- my contemporaries -- did the same sort of work in the segregated minor leagues of the South. Baseball publicly pressed the issue of integration; in a symbolic way, it was our civil rights laboratory.

It is tragic to me that baseball has fallen so far behind basketball and even football in terms of of racial leadership. People question whether baseball is still the national pastime, and I have to wonder, too. It is certainly not the national standard it once was.

The upside of this is that baseball, and baseball only, has Jackie Robinson. Here's hoping that on the 50th anniversary of Jackie's historic breakthrough, baseball will honor him in a way that really matters. It could start more youth programs, give tickets to kids who can't afford them, become a social presence in the cities it depends on. It could hire more black umpires, more black doctors, more black concessionaries, more black executives.

It could hire a black commissioner.

You want a name? How about Colin Powell? He's a great American, a man more popular, maybe, than the President. I'm not out there pushing his candidacy, but I think he would be great for baseball. He would restore some social relevance to the game. He would do honor to Jackie Robinson's name.

It would be even more meaningful, perhaps, if some of Jackie's descendants -- today's players -- committed themselves this year to honoring his name, in act as well as rhetoric.

Jackie's spirit is watching. I know that he would be bitterly disappointed if he saw the way today's black players have abandoned the struggle, but he would be happy for their success nonetheless. And I have no doubt that he'd do it all over again for them.

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/13/opinion/when-baseball-mattered.html

My respect for Mr. Aaron just grew 10 fold. 

>How did one of baseball's most famous players spend so many years unnoticed in Northeast Ohio?

"It was very, very cold," he said. "What did put on was a jacket, a hat that would cover all over my face and I could only see out of my eyes.

"Somebody finally figured out who I was. What happened was that when I left the Dawg Pound, I went to have dinner at one of the restaurants and I took the dog mask and some guy walked behind and pointed right at me and said, 'I thought that was you! I've been watching you all these many years and I finally found out it was you.'"

I used to sit in the Dog Pound at old municipal stadium. It was the end zone on the North side of the Stadium. The fans in the Dog Pound were fenced off from getting anywhere else in the stadium and we're the craziest people in N. E. Ohio. It was fuckin awesome, craziest sports scene I have ever been in. Drinking, smokin, and nut cases throwing batteries at opposing teams when they were inside the ten yard line. They were also the cheapest seats in the stadium and the crowd was mixed and everyone had a great time, at the party, blacks, whites, men, and women. You never seen many kids in the Pound, they were all in the whiter sections. 
 

I have been to the new stadium and seen in person what is now the Dawg Pound. Sad. They priced the fans that used to go to games and sit in the real dog pound out of the stadium, now it's a white yuppie zone that play dress up and wear dawg masks. Do not get me wrong I do enjoy a good human cartoon, but most are just clowns. 

And Hank loved it like I did, and the rest of us miscreants, oddballs, and nut case die hard browns fans. 

 

https://www.wkyc.com/article/sports/nfl/browns/hank-aaron-cleveland-brow...