"Hank Aaron: One for the Record", George Plimpton: This is Why the Hammer is One of My Favortites

I can't remember where I got this, but I'm thinking I picked it up for a quarter or fifty cents from some paperback pile.

Oh man, oh man, oh man! I'm a baseball fan, and a Yankee fan at that, which pretty much makes me an asshole (I do my best to not be obnoxious), but I'd never really considered Hank for a top spot in my pantheon of baseball heroes.

That's changed.

Now I go and preach the merits of "the Hammer" to baseball fan and non- alike.

In this tiny book George Plimpton, of Mousterpiece Theater cartoons from the Disney Channel, of the New Journalism school of intellectual thought with Tom Wolfe, the Intellivision video game console shill, et al, focused his attention on the event of Henry passing Babe Ruth's career homerun record. It reads mostly like an article for the New Yorker or an artsy piece from Rolling Stone.

It's one of my favorite sports books: it's breezy yet deep, it never lingers, and it introduced me to a new world where Hank Aaron was one of the greats. I always knew that, you know, from the stats alone (when he retired he had the most homeruns, RBIs, runs, and was second for hits, and hit over .300 for his career). This book opened up my eyes to the visceral impact of his life (he started in the Negro Leagues!)(his life was threatened everyday for months) had on the game and America.

Plimpton, knowing that he has really only one fleeting moment around which to build an entire writing project--one pitch that gets hit over the fence for homer #715, eclipsing the Babe's 714 career mark, up to recently figured untouchable--decides to focus on different aspects of that fleeting moment.

His subjects are The Observer, The Pitcher, The Hitter, The Ball, The Retriever, The Fan, The Announcer. He visits a baseball factory; the guy who plays Chief Nok-a-Homer, the mascot in full headdress and costume; a wild fan in Atlanta that makes statues of Hank; Hanks's folks.

The world in which Hank Aaron played baseball was far different from today's. The country was still very segregated and it was more accepted to be obviously hostile and prejudiced toward black players. One of my favorite parts of the book is a telling quote from Hank's father:

"Henry was in baseball for work."

It was a job.

I've been one of the few who talk up Hank's status as underrated. The guy isn't ranked nearly high enough in most All-Time lists.

Go Hammer!