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Home > Terence Moore > Archives > 2008 > November > 10
Monday, November 10, 2008
Aaron shed tears of joy over Obama
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hank Aaron eased into one of his famous laughs at the thought. “He’s the 44th president, and that was my uniform number, by the way,” said baseball’s legitimate home run king, before delivering more laughs nearly a week after he cried in the living room of his southwest Atlanta home over the election of Barack Obama.
Moment by moment, Aaron spent Tuesday night dabbing his 74-year-old eyes. He sat with his wife, Billye, in front of two television sets, because they wished to see as much of history as possible.
“I’m still collecting newspapers, different articles, all of those things over this, and I’m still on cloud nine,” said Aaron, referring to the United States selecting its first African-American president. Four days before, Aaron was an emotional wreck in his hometown of Mobile, where they moved his childhood home to a spot near the ballpark that carries his name.
That was nice, but the Obama thing produced Aaron’s ongoing joy. “I’ve been telling people that we may not have gotten our 40 acres and a mule, but we got 50 states,” Aaron said. “It was a happy scene for me — and for a lot of black people, given what we’ve been through in this country, and then to have this history.”
This was amazing history, the kind that Aaron couldn’t envision while growing up on the other side of the segregated tracks in the Deep South. The kind that wasn’t a possibility when he couldn’t share some hotels or even clubhouses with his white teammates. The kind that seemed ridiculous when he battled Babe Ruth’s ghost and racist fans along the way to making 715 and then 755 the new numbers for all-time greatness regarding home runs. The kind that Aaron’s hero, Jackie Robinson, couldn’t imagine, especially since the man who broke baseball’s color barrier died soon after imploring the sport in October 1972 to hire its first black third base coach — not to mention its first black manager.
Now a black man is heading to the White House, and Aaron sighed while recalling so many things. Take Sept. 23, 1957. That’s when Aaron became more popular than beer and cheese in Wisconsin. His walk-off homer at Milwaukee County Stadium gave the National League pennant to the Braves. He was carried off the field by his white teammates.
That same day, an angry white mob in Little Rock forced nine black students to flee Central High School during desegregation attempts.
“No, no. Going back in time, I never thought this was even close to being a possibility regarding the election of a black president in this country,” said Aaron, who knows something about presidents. Except for Dwight Eisenhower, he has encountered all nine of them since he began his journey to Cooperstown in the early 1950s. He hasn’t met Obama, but they attended the same function earlier this year in Atlanta, where Obama spotted Aaron in the crowd and pointed his way.
Even then, Aaron didn’t believe he was viewing a future president.
“None of this has sunk in, and it’s going to become even more unbelievable on that day in January when he stands on that platform and is sworn in,” Aaron said. “I mean, that’s going to really be another emotional day to see him as a black man, with his black wife and two little black girls beside him.”
Aaron paused, searching for words, before adding, “It’s just.” There was another long pause, before he said, “Well, it’s just indescribable, really.”
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