Because he was so outwardly bland in personality and performance, Aaron seemed to take on character only in relation to things people felt strongly about: Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, civil rights. On his own he was, and remains, an abstraction, someone whom writers could only explicate with banalities like "dignified." Our perception of Aaron today stems almost entirely from his pursuit of Ruth's 714 home runs, in 1973 and 1974, during which time he faced down an assortment of death threats and hate mail. By then, Aaron had shed his reticence and begun to speak out against baseball's glacial progress on matters of race. Still, very much his own man, he seemed to dismiss some of the loftier interpretations attached to his home-run chase. "The most basic motivation," he wrote in his autobiography, I Had a Hammer, with Lonnie Wheeler, "was the pure ambition to break such an important and long-standing barrier. Along with that would come the recognition that I thought was long overdue me: I would be out of the shadows."
No matter. Aaron was fashioned into something of a civil rights martyr anyway. "He hammered out home runs in the name of social progress," Wheeler recently wrote in the Cincinnati Post. And Tom Stanton, in the optimistically titled Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America, dropped what has to be the most unlikely Hank Aaron analogy on record: "[P]erhaps it's The Exorcist, the period's biggest movie, that provides a better metaphor for Hank Aaron's trial. … Hank Aaron lured America's ugly demons into the light, revealing them to those who imagined them a thing of the past, and in doing so helped exorcise some of them. His ordeal provided a vivid, personal lesson for a generation of children: Racism is wrong."
Small wonder that, upon eclipsing Ruth, the exorcist told the crowd, "I'd just like to thank God it's over."
Now here is Aaron, once again, this time in the midst of the galloping national hysteria over anabolic steroids. In Aaron, we have our cardboard hero, propped up in the corner to stand in exquisite counterpoint to Bonds. He is not the only one dragooned into this particular mess—"Ryan Howard, No Asterisk," went one preseason headline—but it is most certainly Aaron who is shouldering the psychic load. Even the flatness of his career, strangely, now earns him praise.
"[N]ot one of Aaron's single-season home run totals is among the 68 highest of all time, yet he pounded more in his career than any other player in history—and without suspicion of chemical enhancement," wrote Tom Verducci in this week's Sports Illustrated cover story, blithely sidestepping the very real possibility that Aaron popped amphetamines like Chiclets along with, you know, everyone else in baseball. To even consider that would, of course, call into question a rather large piece of the argument in favor of baseball's current war on steroids—Maintain the sanctity of the record books! Ferret out the cheats!—something sportswriters evidently have little interest in doing. Instead, they summon a hero from the past to redress the supposed sins of the present. "I guess," Reggie Jackson told Verducci, "you can call him the people's home run king."
Our national celebration of Aaron is, fundamentally, childish stuff. This is baseball telling fairy tales to itself, pretending the bad things away, using a Hall of Famer as a rhetorical bludgeon and in doing so diminishing the very man it pretends to exalt. There is a word for that. Undignified.
Tommy Craggs is a writer in New York. Photograph of Hank Aaron by AP Photo. Photograph of Barry Bonds by Elsa/Getty Images.
Remarks from the Fray:
Tommy Craggs's article about Hank Aaron's career is at complete odds with my memory of it. I remember my grand parents would take me and my brother to Braves games as cheap entertainment. One night we saw Hank Aaron blast a shot off the right field foul pole to win a game against the Reds. The next night, he hit two consecutive home runs to right center field (he was a brilliant opposite field hitter). Then, he hit a vicious liner into this Howard Johnsons style "Brave" statute they had on the first base line at deceased Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Memories.
"Flat" "No personality" "Meaningless" What is Cragg talking about?
--bonetone1
(To reply, click here.)
The article points out that Aaron "never hit more than 47 home runs in a year, never hit better than .355, never had an on-base percentage higher than .410" as evidence of his lack of "flavor." While none of these stats on their own are record breaking, they are all VERY good. When taken together, these numbers are evidence of an incredibly elite player. How many players that have hit 47 HR in a season have also hit .355 in a season? Off the top of my head maybe Ruth, Bonds, Williams, and Mantle? A more correct way of looking at it is that while Aaron was not the all-time best at any one skill, he was one of the best all around players in the history of the game, and he did it consistently for 23 years.
--cddowney
(To reply, click here.)
So what's wrong about baseball wanting someone like Aaron over someone like Bonds? Aaron had a career worthy of the Hall of Fame, used his fame to champion worthy causes, and, contrary to the author's subtle attempted swipe, never tainted the legacy by cheating. Bonds, on the other hand, took a perfectly good career that would have gotten him into the hall anyway and tainted it with steroids, giving him access to a record he doesn't deserve, notoriety he (apparently) doesn't want, and espouses no other cause other than the "More Money for Barry" campaign. Bonds does not enjoy public appearances, makes a terrible spokesperson (despite his gifts, he has few endorsement deals), and generally seems to loathe the attention of anyone but close friends and family. The next time someone comes up to this record, will he be mentioned in the same reverential terms as Aaron? Only a fool would say yes. Many of us will breathe a sigh of relief that this False King will be dethroned. There won't be something as ugly as racism or steroids that causes the jeers next time, next time we will be glad for the record coming down, along with its tainted hero, to someone that deserves it and we can cheer for as he approaches the mark.
--speedracerx
(To reply, click here.)
I don't really give a rat's behind that Barry Bonds is a jerk. He's not the first unlikeable player in baseball history, after all. In fact, Bonds' unbearable arrogance might make him considerably more interesting than the average player.
The problem with Bonds is that he cheated, pure and simple. That home run statistic is probably the holiest in a game obsessed with statistics, and he's going to earn it in an unethical manner. I suppose I'm like a lot of baseball fans; when I think about Bonds getting away with this, it burns me up. Taking steroids is at least as bad as betting on the game or throwing a World Series, but the league lacks the gumption of a Bart Giamatti to do what has to be done. Barry Bonds doesn't disgust me any more than Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa disgusts me. All of them should have been slammed for using steroids, and none of them should be in the Hall. They won't be forgotten; Joe Jackson isn't forgotten, after all. Bud Selig and the rest of the owners are gutless, and they have been for a long, long time. The greed of the Player's Union and their implicit defense of the players' use of narcotics, which is well-documented, is egregious, but the buck stops with the owners. They get absolutely no sympathy from me.
--Anse
(To reply, click here.)
Two-three hours per day in a gym will get you Barry's body if you have the know-how and the cash to hire a trainer. Not to mention the before pictures everyone is so concerned about show that he had the potential to pack on a lot of muscle despite his seemingly waifish frame. Take another look: big shoulders, big legs and his head was already large, his face already chubby.
The myopic view of members of the media and their belief in a book that was written with the express intent to make money leaves me with more questions than answers. Bonds has spent nearly 20 years as a MLB player, with access to state of the art facilities and trained professionals and had already shown the potential for greatness before he landed in San Francisco. Bottom line: reconsider what you think you know.
Oh, and leave Hank alone. It's bad enough he received death threats while breaking the record, but to have his golden years ruined with constant media attention over someone else's story is unprofessional and inhumane.
--WillJeff
(To reply, click here.)
We the people are called out as idiotic rabble and maybe rightly so. Ignorant, most definitely, but why shouldn't we be ignorant? Everything almost all of us knows about Henry Aaron comes from media sources. If an assortment of mean dry-drunk buffet hounds tell us of Mr. Aaron's grace and dignity, how are we to know different? If SI tells us Barry Bonds is a puppy-strangling villain who derives not only his power but his batting eye and preparation from pills and syringes, well, GIGO again. There's no practical way for us to 'just know' that the tropes and praxes of hegemony from sportswriters are 'really' allegorical complaints about the cheap blended versus single malt scotch in their hotel mini-bar.
--badgolf36
(To reply, click here.)
(7/26)
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Remarks from the Fray:
Tommy Craggs's article about Hank Aaron's career is at complete odds with my memory of it. I remember my grand parents would take me and my brother to Braves games as cheap entertainment. One night we saw Hank Aaron blast a shot off the right field foul pole to win a game against the Reds. The next night, he hit two consecutive home runs to right center field (he was a brilliant opposite field hitter). Then, he hit a vicious liner into this Howard Johnsons style "Brave" statute they had on the first base line at deceased Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Memories.
"Flat" "No personality" "Meaningless" What is Cragg talking about?
--bonetone1
(To reply, click here.)
The article points out that Aaron "never hit more than 47 home runs in a year, never hit better than .355, never had an on-base percentage higher than .410" as evidence of his lack of "flavor." While none of these stats on their own are record breaking, they are all VERY good. When taken together, these numbers are evidence of an incredibly elite player. How many players that have hit 47 HR in a season have also hit .355 in a season? Off the top of my head maybe Ruth, Bonds, Williams, and Mantle? A more correct way of looking at it is that while Aaron was not the all-time best at any one skill, he was one of the best all around players in the history of the game, and he did it consistently for 23 years.
--cddowney
(To reply, click here.)
So what's wrong about baseball wanting someone like Aaron over someone like Bonds? Aaron had a career worthy of the Hall of Fame, used his fame to champion worthy causes, and, contrary to the author's subtle attempted swipe, never tainted the legacy by cheating. Bonds, on the other hand, took a perfectly good career that would have gotten him into the hall anyway and tainted it with steroids, giving him access to a record he doesn't deserve, notoriety he (apparently) doesn't want, and espouses no other cause other than the "More Money for Barry" campaign. Bonds does not enjoy public appearances, makes a terrible spokesperson (despite his gifts, he has few endorsement deals), and generally seems to loathe the attention of anyone but close friends and family. The next time someone comes up to this record, will he be mentioned in the same reverential terms as Aaron? Only a fool would say yes. Many of us will breathe a sigh of relief that this False King will be dethroned. There won't be something as ugly as racism or steroids that causes the jeers next time, next time we will be glad for the record coming down, along with its tainted hero, to someone that deserves it and we can cheer for as he approaches the mark.
--speedracerx
(To reply, click here.)
I don't really give a rat's behind that Barry Bonds is a jerk. He's not the first unlikeable player in baseball history, after all. In fact, Bonds' unbearable arrogance might make him considerably more interesting than the average player.
The problem with Bonds is that he cheated, pure and simple. That home run statistic is probably the holiest in a game obsessed with statistics, and he's going to earn it in an unethical manner. I suppose I'm like a lot of baseball fans; when I think about Bonds getting away with this, it burns me up. Taking steroids is at least as bad as betting on the game or throwing a World Series, but the league lacks the gumption of a Bart Giamatti to do what has to be done. Barry Bonds doesn't disgust me any more than Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa disgusts me. All of them should have been slammed for using steroids, and none of them should be in the Hall. They won't be forgotten; Joe Jackson isn't forgotten, after all. Bud Selig and the rest of the owners are gutless, and they have been for a long, long time. The greed of the Player's Union and their implicit defense of the players' use of narcotics, which is well-documented, is egregious, but the buck stops with the owners. They get absolutely no sympathy from me.
--Anse
(To reply, click here.)
Two-three hours per day in a gym will get you Barry's body if you have the know-how and the cash to hire a trainer. Not to mention the before pictures everyone is so concerned about show that he had the potential to pack on a lot of muscle despite his seemingly waifish frame. Take another look: big shoulders, big legs and his head was already large, his face already chubby.
The myopic view of members of the media and their belief in a book that was written with the express intent to make money leaves me with more questions than answers. Bonds has spent nearly 20 years as a MLB player, with access to state of the art facilities and trained professionals and had already shown the potential for greatness before he landed in San Francisco. Bottom line: reconsider what you think you know.
Oh, and leave Hank alone. It's bad enough he received death threats while breaking the record, but to have his golden years ruined with constant media attention over someone else's story is unprofessional and inhumane.
--WillJeff
(To reply, click here.)
We the people are called out as idiotic rabble and maybe rightly so. Ignorant, most definitely, but why shouldn't we be ignorant? Everything almost all of us knows about Henry Aaron comes from media sources. If an assortment of mean dry-drunk buffet hounds tell us of Mr. Aaron's grace and dignity, how are we to know different? If SI tells us Barry Bonds is a puppy-strangling villain who derives not only his power but his batting eye and preparation from pills and syringes, well, GIGO again. There's no practical way for us to 'just know' that the tropes and praxes of hegemony from sportswriters are 'really' allegorical complaints about the cheap blended versus single malt scotch in their hotel mini-bar.
--badgolf36
(To reply, click here.)
(7/26)