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Saturday, May 27, 2006
Praise for Aaron, not Bonds
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Well, what’s all this fuss about Barry Bonds breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record, which he may or may not have done by this time? First place, Ruth doesn’t hold the home run record. Once Bonds has hit his 715th he’ll still be 40 home runs shy of the record, and that record is real. Unenhanced by any substance stronger than a 12-ounce steak and a buttered baked potato. I guess. I really don’t remember what Henry Aaron’s favorite foods were, and are.
You hear old-time baseball dudes talk about sweet swings, they speak of Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio, you rarely ever heard them serenade the Aaron swing. Tell you this, you never saw a more controlled swing. It was as sweet as you could have wanted. He wasn’t swinging for the fences, Henry was swinging for base hits. It was as pure a swing as you’ll ever see, wrist-powered, and his trademark home run was not a rocket shot, he hit line drives.
Team press guides weren’t what they are today. You could carry them in your hip pocket. But, believe or not, the season after Aaron broke Ruth’s record, it was never mentioned in the Braves’ 1975 press guide, which was something awful, to begin with. He breaks the record in an Atlanta uniform, he is traded to the Milwaukee Brewers, and as far as the press guide editor was concerned, he may as well have been extradited to Siberia.
He hit his first home run in 1953 off Vic Raschi in St. Louis. No. 755 was hit off a journeyman named Dick Drago, a California Angel. For years in between, the eye was on Willie Mays as the likely new home run king. Mays got attention. He was exciting. When he ran his cap always seemed to fall off. Aaron, taking note, once said, “Maybe I should wear a larger cap.”
Whether he is or is not the greatest player of them all won’t be decided here. Babe Ruth was more than a home run slugger, he was first a pitcher who won 93 games, three more in the World Series, and for the longest time held the record for most consecutive scoreless innings in the Series. He had two careers, and was a star at both, and it’s pretty tough to top that.
Aaron was a mild man as a player, never flamboyant. When he talked, he made sentences and chose his words carefully. And when he was amused, he had a catchy little throaty chuckle. He had, as well as I can remember, only one spat with a sports writer, and that was a case of mistaken identity. The guy who actually wrote the distasteful reference got away with it.
As Mays’ career took the downward path, suddenly here came Aaron. Forty-seven home runs in 1971, his most productive season with the long ball; 34 the next season, then 40 in 1973, and he was poised to strike. You’ll notice that his home runs were hit at a rather even pace, ranging from 24 to 47 in the meat seasons of his production. Never any outlandish surge of numbers, and at the end of his career, he weighed about the same as when he broke in.
I can’t say that anywhere east of San Francisco are the hearts beating furiously until Bonds hit his 715th. Ho hum. With Aaron, he couldn’t take a shower without finding someone in it with him. News types were everywhere. The quiet man had exploded into a world personality. And as Pat Conroy wrote, “Even Pravda took note.”
Henry is now quietly successful, sitting behind the desk at his BMW place in Union City. He can be himself again, and I’ll have to confess that I’ve joined in with the 755 choir, singing his anthem. I don’t see 40 more home runs in Bonds’ bat, at least that’s the way I’ve diagrammed it.
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