Baseball has witnessed more than 125,000 major-league home runs. Many have altered the outcomes of games, and some, swatted into the stands on dramatic last swings, have decided pennants and won reputations. But no home run has played a more significant role in influencing American society than Hank Aaron's 715th.

Aaron's historic blast -- and the yearlong quest leading up to it -- not only shook baseball but the world at large. It exposed prejudice, energized a flagging civil rights movement, inspired a generation of children, and also called forth the dark demons that haunted Aaron's every step and turned what should have been a joyous pursuit into a hellish nightmare. In Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America, Tom Stanton, author of the prize-winning The Final Season, penetrates the burnished myth of Aaron's chase and uncovers the compelling story behind the most consequential athletic achievement of the past fifty years.

The tale takes place during tumultuous times, the years of 1973 and 1974, as the Watergate scandal unfolds and the Vietnam War sputters to an end. It's the era of Ali and Archie Bunker, of Wounded Knee and Patty Hearst, of Roe v. Wade and Billie Jean King versus Bobby Riggs, of oil shortages, and of a nation struggling with deep divisions. At the center of the social storm stands a private, dignified man -- Hank Aaron -- who rises to accept the mantle of his recently deceased idol, Jackie Robinson, and becomes emboldened by the purpose of his mission: to break the record of sport's greatest legend, Babe Ruth, not only for himself but for the advancement of all African Americans and for the good of his country.

Along the way, Aaron endures bigots, zealous fans, hate mail, FBI investigations, bodyguards, the ambivalence of his adopted hometown, a batting slump unlike any other, the sniping comments of Babe Ruth's widow, the slights of baseball's commissioner, a string of controversies, and constant threats to his and his children's lives. The story features a rich cast of characters: a friend and sometime rival, Willie Mays, who must come to terms with the end of his own career; Aaron's hard-as-iron protector, manager Eddie Mathews; a young, self-assured, occasionally cocky protégé, Dusty Baker; a future president, Jimmy Carter; a preacher of rising prominence, the Reverend Jesse Jackson; stars like Willie Stargell and Tom Seaver; and a roster of equally colorful, lesser-known peers.

But at the heart of the narrative is Hank Aaron, a class player who refused to preen at home plate or strut shamelessly around the bases even as he reached the pinnacle of the national pastime. Three decades later, Tom Stanton brings to life on these pages the elusive spirit of an American hero.

Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America

William Morrow & Company

Chapter One

Jackie's Funeral

They came in silence and in somber suits. Thousands ofthem, many famous, most not, politicians and sportsstars and civil rights leaders alongside schoolchildrenand factory workers and fans of a team that long ago played inBrooklyn. They came from across the country, by plane andtrain and limousine, from Washington and Chicago, fromPasadena, California, and Mobile, Alabama, and every boroughof New York City, a river of people flowing through the heavy,etched doors of the Neo-Gothic Riverside Church nearHarlem, flowing beneath a dingy row of granite angels into thecool, solemn darkness of a sanctuary where the Rev. MartinLuther King once pleaded for peace.

They came for Jackie Robinson.

It was warm for late October, a Friday in 1972, the presidential election just days away. Outside, the sky was bright with sunshine, the crowded pavement drenched in the shadows of the twenty-one-story church. Inside, light filtered through stained-glass windows and touched the wooden pews as mourners strode past the open, gray-blue casket of the man who in 1947 had become the first black to play baseball in the major leagues.

A young preacher, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, gave theeulogy that morning. Standing tall in a full Afro that fell uponthe back collar of his black-and-red robe, he spoke of the formerballplayer, his cadenced, deliberate voice buffed by aSouth Carolina accent. "His powerful arms lifted not onlybats but barriers," said Jackson. He looked out at more thanthree thousand mourners. Among them were Robinson's family;entertainers, activists, and athletes like Joe Louis, RobertaFlack, and Bill Russell; an entourage of forty representingPresident Richard Nixon; baseball executives; white Dodgerteammates such as Pee Wee Reese and Ralph Branca; and aroster of black ballplayers who, within a decade of Robinson'sdebut, had followed him into the major leagues: Larry Doby,Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Monte Irvin, Willie Mays,Joe Black, Junior Gilliam, Ernie Banks, Elston Howard, andHank Aaron.

They formed a fraternity of sorts, most having played together in the Negro leagues and on barnstorming teams and allstar squads. They had all experienced the indignity of beingrefused service at restaurants where their white teammates ate,of being forced to stay at seedy hotels and boardinghouses, ofplaying with and against athletes who preferred they be invisible.They all knew firsthand the wickedness Jackie Robinsonhad endured. To varying degrees, they had all en dured it themselves. And they all had stories to tell.

"He was a tremendous competitor," said Campanella, in awheelchair since the car accident that ended his career. "Themore you got on him, the more he was going to hurt you. Othersmight have gotten upset in a situation like this but notJackie. He got better."

"We're all very sad," said Gilliam. "He was one of thegreatest all-around athletes I've ever known on any athleticfield. I was very close to him, and I learned a great deal fromhim on the field and off."

Joe Black and Larry Doby had been with Robinson ninedays earlier when he was honored before the second game ofthe World Series. His friends knew he was ill. Diabetes andheart trouble had ravaged him. Though only fifty-three yearsold, Robinson had white hair, walked with a cane, was blind inone eye and losing sight in the other. He couldn't see wellenough to recognize old friends.

Beneath the grandstands in Cincinnati that afternoon, a fanapproached Robinson and asked him to autograph a ball. "I'msorry," Robinson said. "I can't see it. I'd be sure to mess up theother names you have on it."

"There are no other names," the man said. "I only wantyours."

When first invited to the World Series, Robinson had declined. He felt estranged from baseball, angry that the sport offered so few post-playing opportunities to minorities. He hadbeen public in his criticism. A quarter century after Robinsonbroke the color barrier for players, the major leagues still hadnot hired a black manager. The biases that labeled blacks unqualified for such leadership positions persisted. "If you peopleexpect me to change my thinking, or my speech, you're mistakenbecause I'm simply not going to do it," he warned thecommissioner's office before agreeing to appear. "If the reportersask me how I feel about baseball still not having anyblack managers, I'm going to tell them."

But he did not wait for anyone to ask.

Standing before the pitcher's mound with his wife besidehim and dignitaries and a military color guard behind him,Robinson acknowledged the applause of the packed stadium.He thanked baseball for recognizing the anniversary of hisdebut and then concluded by reiterating the dream that heknew he would not live to see. He told a television audienceof millions, "I am extremely proud and pleased to be herethis afternoon but must admit I'm going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third basecoaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball."

After the game, Robinson visited the clubhouse of the victorious Oakland A's. Some witnesses said he looked out ofplace, a shadow of the strong man he once was. Some said helooked sad, his eyes glassy. Others noted the indifference of theplayers to whom he was being introduced. Only John "BlueMoon" Odom lavished attention on Robinson. "There seems tobe a feeling among the current black players that they oweJackie nothing," remarked one observer. It was a notion thatRobinson's peers embraced as true—and one that upset them,for they had tried to pass on an appreciation for the sacrifices ofRobinson and the other pioneers, just as they had passed theirwisdom to them.

Excerpted from Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed Americaby Stanton, Tom Excerpted by permission.
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