An essay by Jerome Holtzman, from Hank Aaron’s “Home Run”
Aaron first came to the attention of the Boston Braves early in the 1952 season through a postscript in a letter from Syd Pollock, owner of the Clowns, to farm director John Mullen. It was two years before the Braves moved to Milwaukee. “P.S.,” Pollock wrote, “We’ve got an 18-year old shortstop batting cleanup for us.” Mullen alerted scout Dewey Griggs.
In the beginning, Buster Haywood, the Clowns manager, wasn’t impressed. “This kid barely talks,” said Haywood. He used Aaron sparingly in the belief he didn’t have much of a baseball future. Hank was a good soldier and rode the bench without complaint. Still, it was apparent he could hit. Once he fell asleep on a long bus trip and woke up hitting, adding to his reputation for nonchalance. “He didn’t wake up until we got to Buffalo,” a teammate marveled. “Then he got off the bus and got 10 hits in 11 times at bat.”
When several of his players went down with injuries, Haywood had to put Aaron in the lineup and the hits started to fall — hard singles through the infield, line-drive doubles into the gaps and an occasional home run. It didn’t take Aaron long to earn a reputation as a dangerous hitter. He also became aware that “people were noticing me.”
Buck O’Neil, who later worked with the Chicago Cubs as a coach and a scout but was then managing the Kansas City Monarchs, was awestruck.
“We were playing the Clowns down in Alabama or Louisiana during the spring,” O’Neil recalled. “I noticed this young boy hitting in the fourth spot and I said to Haywood, ‘Buster, what about this kid?’ And he said, ‘Buck, he can really swing the bat.’
“I had some pretty good pitchers who had been around the block a few times, and the first time he came up I told the pitcher to throw him a good fastball. He threw a fastball and the kid hit it up against the right field fence. The next time he came up I had my best lefthander in there, and I said ‘Throw this kid a good fastball.’ He threw his fastball on the first pitch, and the kid hit it against the center field fence. I looked over at Buster and Buster was just laughing at me. The last time, I had the star of my staff in there, an old pro named Hilton Smith, and I told Smith to throw curveballs. The kid hit a curveball over the left field fence.
“After the game, I told Buster, ‘You and I both know that by the time you get to Kansas City to play us, this kid won’t be with you anymore.’ No way a hitter like that is going to stay in the Negro League.”
“The kid’s worth $7,500 just for his swing,” Dewey Griggs, the Boston scout, told John Mullen, who ran the Braves’ minor league operation. “I’d make the down payment out of my own pocket. He can play anywhere, except pitch and catch. But don’t do anything to him at bat. He’s one of the best natural hitters I’ve ever seen.”
Griggs continued on Aaron’s trail. The more he saw the more he was convinced. In a May 23, 1952 report to Mullen, Griggs wrote:
Scouted the doubleheader between Indianapolis and Memphis at Buffalo Sunday afternoon. Heavy morning showers left the field in a muddy condition and prevented good fielding.
Henry Aaron looked very good. In the first game he had seven chances, two fly balls back of third and five hard-hit ground balls. Started one double play from short to second to first, hit three-for-five, two line drive singles over third and short and a perfect bunt down the third base line. These hits were made off a good-looking lefthander.
In the second game he accepted five chances without an error and hit three-for-four. Off the starting lefthanded pitcher he hit an outside curve ball over the right field fence, 350 feet away, and dropped down another perfect bunt. In the sixth inning he hit a low inside curve for a single over second base off a righthander with bases loaded.
By midseason Aaron was leading the league with a .457 average. Pedro Zorilla, a scout with the New York Giants, had joined Griggs in the hunt. On Zorilla’s recommendation, the Giants agreed to meet Pollock’s $7,500 asking price.
The Braves topped the Giants’ offer, and the deal was made. Pollock would get $2,500 down, another $500 if Aaron made a Triple A league, and the full $7,500 if he reached the big leagues. This was in the bonus-baby era, the age of the $l00,000 signing price. The Braves signed Aaron for $350 a month and gave him an airplane ticket to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where they had a farm club in the Class C Northern League.
He reported in the latter part of the season, played in only 87 games, and batted .336 with 9 home runs and 61 runs batted in. He was named the league’s All-Star shortstop and Rookie of the Year. The next season Aaron was promoted to the Jacksonville Tars of the Class A Sally League (Southern Atlantic League). At the season’s end there was no longer any doubt, if there had ever been, that he was en route to stardom.
Henry led the league in hitting with a .362 average, in RBIs, 125; runs, 115; hits, 208; and in putouts, assists and even errors. He had 22 home runs, and was second in triples, the best indication of his speed. Better yet, he struck out only 22 times, a ratio of one K for every 26 at-bats, unusually low for a power hitter.
Ben Geraghty, his manager at Jacksonville, couldn’t remember a batter who so thoroughly dominated the Sally League. Said Geraghty: “He just stood up there flicking those great wrists and simply overpowered the pitching.” Henry won the Most Valuable Player Award and led the Tars to their first pennant in 41 years. For his good work, Henry was invited to the Braves’ major league spring training camp in Bradenton, Florida.
By this time it was apparent he could make the big leagues as a hitter but not as an infielder. He had played shortstop at Eau Claire and second base at Jacksonville but was not impressive at either position. It was then decided to convert him into an outfielder. So he was dispatched to the Puerto Rican Winter League where he would be competing against other top major league prospects. He joined the Caguas club managed by Mickey Owen, a one-time big league catcher who is most remembered for dropping a third strike in the 1941 World Series. Recalled Owen: “He was just a kid but he wasn’t green.”
The trip to Puerto Rico was Aaron’s honeymoon. Two days before departure, on October 6, 1953, he and the former Barbara Lucas were married. She had been a student at Florida A&M but was then living at home in Jacksonville, less than two blocks from the ballpark. Her father had played ball and so did one of her brothers, Bill, who several years later was also signed by the Braves. Bill failed as a player but subsequently became the Braves’ respected front office boss, the first African-American to become a major league general manager.
Six months earlier, during the middle of the 1953 spring training season, because of falling attendance, the Braves moved from Boston to Milwaukee, the first change in the major league map in a half century. The Boston newspapers yelled “foul.” The Braves had been in Boston for 82 years without interruption. For Henry and his bride it would be an easier life. Milwaukee was comparatively free of racial tension.
The shift to the outfield was painless. As usual, Aaron had no problem adjusting to the pitching and was among the league’s leading hitters. All eyes were on him. Tom Sheehan of the New York Giants, who was in the Caribbean on a scouting mission, was unable to restrain himself and told whoever would listen, “I’ve seen a kid who could turn out to be a better ballplayer than Willie Mays. His name is Henry Aaron.”
The next stop was the Braves’ spring training camp in Bradenton, Florida. “When I first saw him I thought he had come to deliver a telegram,” recalled Charlie Grimm, the Milwaukee manager. Soon, Aaron was delivering base hits to all fields. In Sarasota one afternoon, during an exhibition against the Boston Red Sox, Ted Williams, who seldom participated in these games, heard the sound of a bat meeting the ball.
“Who the hell hit that one?” Williams asked Bob Wolf of the Milwaukee Journal.
“Aaron, a new kid,” Wolf replied.
“Sounds like a helluva hitter,” Williams said.
Aaron’s sojourn in the Braves camp was a courtesy invitation. The Braves had promoted him from Jacksonville to the roster of their Toledo club in the Triple A American Association. No one expected Aaron to make the parent team. The scenario changed in the middle of spring training, on March 13 in St. Petersburg, in an exhibition against the Yankees. Bobby Thomson drove a ball into the left field corner and broke his right leg, just, above the ankle, sliding into second. It was a crushing blow.
The Braves had finished second the previous season, their first in Milwaukee, and during the off-season had acquired Thomson, who had hit the most famous home run in diamond history, the so-called “Shot Heard ’Round the World.” The home run came in the ninth inning of the decisive playoff game against Brooklyn and lifted the Giants to the pennant. Thomson was expected to provide similar heroics for the Braves and help lead them to the 1954 pennant.
The next day, in a game against Cincinnati, Aaron replaced Thomson in left field and responded with three hits — a single, triple and home run. A few days before the Braves broke camp, Grimm told him, “Kid, you’re my left fielder. It’s yours until somebody takes it away from you.”
Phil Musick, in his wonderfully detailed Hank Aaron, The Man Who Beat the Babe, said Aaron was eager to take advantage of his sudden opportunity. “I kept reading the Braves had lost the pennant when Bobby Thomson broke his leg. That didn’t do my confidence any good,” Aaron said, “but I didn’t want to open the trap door and find myself on the way back to Toledo.”
The trap door never opened. He was signed to a Milwaukee contract and was in the Braves’ Opening Day lineup. Aaron had the usual rookie problems of adjusting to big league pitching, particularly to off-speed breaking pitches. In his big league debut against Cincinnati he was hitless in five trips. Bud Podbielan, a slow-baller, started for the Reds and was relieved by Joe Nuxhall in the second inning. Nuxhall doesn’t remember much of that game, except the pregame clubhouse meeting. “We thought he was a high-ball hitter,” Nuxhall recalled.
But there was no precise way to pitch to him. Bob Friend, ace of Pittsburgh’s staff, said Aaron’s advantage was that he never committed himself early; he waited longer on the pitch than anyone in the National League.
“I’ve seen him hit pitches off his ear into the right field seats,” Friend moaned. “And he gets more hits off bad balls than most batters get off a pitch in the middle of the plate. He swings at everything he can reach.” Grimm, asked to describe Aaron’s strike zone, said “Anywhere from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.”
Two days before Labor Day, Aaron fractured his right ankle sliding into third base. Ironically, Thomson, who had returned in August, went in to run for him. His season was over, but Aaron had played in 122 games, had 468 at-bats, drove in 69 runs and, after going 5-for-5 on the last day, had lifted his average to .280. He was limited to 13 home runs but hit one or more in each National League park. The first of his 755 home runs was off Vic Raschi of the Cardinals on April 23 in St. Louis.
From then on he terrorized National League pitchers: .314, with 27 home runs and 106 RBIs in 1955; and .328, 26 HR and 92 RBIs in 1956, when Aaron had a 25-game hitting streak from July 15 through August 8. The Braves held first place for 126 days and had a one-game lead with three games to play but lost the pennant to the Dodgers on the final day.
Henry was tuning up for one of his best seasons. He led the Braves to their first Milwaukee flag in 1957 and won the league’s Most Valuable Player Award with a near-Triple Crown performance: 44 home runs, a career high 132 runs batted in, and a .322 average. Appropriately, his 44th home run, off Billy Muffett of the Cardinals, clinched the pennant and broke a 2–2, 11th inning tie.
It was a slump-proof season for The Hammer. In late July, he was leading both leagues in batting, home runs and RBIs. Fred Haney, an old-school martinet, had replaced the popular Grimm as the Braves manager. Aaron had difficulty adjusting to Haney, who was overly critical and constantly pushing for perfection. In late August, after the Braves had won 17 of 19 games, Haney joined the chorus.
“He’s more like Hornsby than any hitter I’ve seen,” Haney said. “And Hornsby was the greatest righthanded hitter I ever saw. It’s incredible the way he hits the ball to right field with all that power. He’s more than just a natural hitter. He has the temperament and the disposition to go with it.”
Other baseball veterans also watched in awe. Observed Mayo Smith, manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, “There’s no book on him. You have to pitch to him down the middle with everything you’ve got and then close your eyes.”
An hour before the midnight June 15 trading deadline, two days before Grimm was dismissed, the Milwaukee brass consummated a deal with the Giants that helped put them across: Red Schoendienst for the aging Bobby Thomson and pitcher Ray Crone. Schoendienst was precisely what the Braves needed: a seasoned second baseman who steadied the infield. He finished third in the MVP balloting, behind Aaron and Musial.
The Braves were an enormous success at the gate. For the second year in a row they set an all-time regular-season National League attendance record, 2.2 million; then they beat the Yankees in a seven-game World Series. Aaron was the batting star. He led both teams with a .393 average, three home runs, and 7 RBIs.
Holtzman’s essay continues tomorrow, at Our Game.
The Way to Fame, Part 2 was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.