FREE ESSAY ON HENRY AARON

HENRY AARON

Everybody knows that Henry Aaron holds the record for the most career homeruns. But most
of them probably do not know that he also holds the record for the most career Runs
Batted In (RBIs) with 2297. The reason is that this record is not as glamorous. Well, not
everything about Hank Aaron was glamorous. He had to overcome great odds and work very
hard to get where he is today. 
Henry Louis Aaron was born on February 5, 1934. Ironically, Aaron was born one day before
Babe Ruth's birthday. This was right in the middle of the Great Depression. Because of
the fact that it was the Great Depression, his father was lucky to bring home seventy
five to eighty dollars per week. His childhood was not luxurious. Something that he used
to do for fun was to take his mother's broom and some soda pop bottle caps and set up
markers in the yard. If he hit the bottle caps to the first marker, he would give himself
a single. A hit to the second marker would be a double, etc. Aaron only played this game
when there were no other children around. 
Hank Aaron's first wife was Barbara Lucas from Jacksonville. They were divorced in
December of 1970. On November 12, 1973, he married Billye Williams of Atlanta. Hank's
four children are Gaile, Hankie, Dorinda, and Ceci. 
In 1950, Aaron went to play for the Mobile Black Bears for one day a week and ten dollars
per game. In 1951 he attended the Brooklyn Dodgers tryout camp. Hank's first professional
baseball team was the Indianapolis Clowns in 1952. He played so well for them that Dewey
Griggs, a Milwaukee Braves scout, came to watch him play. Griggs noticed that Aaron
batted cross-handed. So he went to Aaron after the game and came to an agreement that if
Aaron did well batting the right way, that he would switch. It turns out that he did
great the next day, going three for three. Griggs was so impressed with Aaron that he
invited him to the Braves' Spring Training camp. 
During the camp, the roster was determined and Aaron was not on it. However, being the
type of person that he was, he stayed around just to practice with the team. It turns out
that this was the best decision of his career because later that spring, the Braves' left
fielder broke his ankle. This opened a spot on the team. The next day, Aaron started in
his place and got three hits, including a line-drive homerun. Because of his success, the
manager offered Aaron a contract to play for the Braves. 
By the end of the 1973 season, he had 713 career homeruns, one less than the all-time
record. During the off-season, Aaron received a lot of hate mail and death threats,
mostly from people who did not want to see a black man break Babe Ruth's record. Aaron
was quoted as saying, "As the hate mail piled up, I became more and more intent on
breaking the record and shoving it into the ugly faces of those bigots" (Aaron). "On the
night of April 8, 1974, at 9:07 PM, Henry Aaron hit a fastball off of Al Downing that
flew over the left field fence for homerun number 715" (Aaron). Aaron ended his career
with 755 homeruns. He also played in 3298 games, batted 12,364 times, had 3771 hits, had
a .305 batting average, and won three Gold Gloves. He led the National League in RBI's
four times, and in HR's four times. He won the Rookie of the Year award in his first
professional season. In 1975, he was given the Spingarn Medal, which is given out by the
NAACP every year. It is like an achievement award. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in
1982 and his 715th homerun was recently voted the Greatest Moment in Baseball History. 
Although Henry Aaron was a great baseball player, he was also a hard worker. He had to
overcome a lot of adversity to get where he is today. He was a black man that grew up in
a poor neighborhood during the Great Depression. It was very tough. How many people would
continue to do something that they love even though other people threaten to kill them if
they continue to do it? This is the kind of dedication and work ethic that Henry Aaron
had. He would not give up just because that is what some idiot wanted. He truly was one
of the greatest men of our time. 
Bibliography
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aaron, Hank and Wheeler, Lonnie. I Had A Hammer: The Hank Aaron 
Story. HarperCollins Publishers, 1991. 
Hank Aaron. CD-ROM. Microsoft Encarta Multimedia Encyclopedia. 
Funk and Wagnalls Corporation, 1996. 
Henry Aaron. CD-ROM. World Book Multimedia Encyclopedia, 1997. 
Rennert, Richard Scott. Henry Aaron. New York: Chelsea House 
Publishers, 1993. 
Tackach, James. Hank Aaron. New York: James Charleton Associates,
1992.