The Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority believes it has the paperwork to prove that Hank Aaron’s statue belongs to the people of Atlanta and Fulton County. The Braves believe Aaron’s statue should go wherever Aaron wants it, although the Braves – who hold no love for any governmental body in Atlanta or Fulton County – surely wouldn’t mind hauling it 14.8 miles north to SunTrust Park. In Aaron’s last public statement on the matter, he said he was conflicted.
Far be it from me to try to sway the Hammer, but if the question is, “Where should the statue go?”, the answer seems a no-brainer.
It should stay in Atlanta.
Because the statue in question doesn’t just capture Henry Louis Aaron taking a swing. It captures him taking The Swing. At 9:06 p.m. on April 8, 1974, Aaron lashed Al Downing’s 1-0 fastball over the fence in left-center. It was his 715th home run, moving him ahead of Babe Ruth. (Guessing you knew all that already.) The bronze statue replicates the famous photos snapped just after impact: We see the bat’s follow-through; we see Aaron’s eyes cast skyward, tracking the flight of what he knew already was the long-awaited clout.
We see, in sum, a snippet in time that – even at 9:06 that Monday night – we all knew would be remembered as long as time is counted on this third rock from the sun. We see what was and remains the greatest moment in the history of Atlanta sports, one of the handful of greatest moments in the history of Atlanta.
Three different broadcasters called No. 715 live. On the Braves’ network, Milo Hamilton cried: “There’s a new home-run champion of all time, and it’s Henry Aaron!” (As George Plimpton noted in his book “One For The Record,” this was neither terribly memorable or “especially grammatical.”) On NBC, which carried the game live in prime time hoping Hank would deliver, Curt Gowdy offered: “He did it!” But it’s the third voice – that of man who grew up in New York and became an institution on a different coast – who cut to the heart of the matter.
Said Vin Scully, speaking to Los Angelos on the Dodgers’ network, L.A. having been the visiting team that momentous night: “There’s a high drive into deep left-center field. Buckner goes back … to the fence. It is gone!”
And then, demonstrating why he’s – borrowing from the inscription on Michael Jordan’s statue, of all things – the best there ever was and the best there ever will be, Scully shut up. For 24 seconds, he said nothing. Then, as Aaron was being greeted behind home plate by teammates and family, Scully said it all:
“What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking the record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron.”
It was a moment authored by a Brave, but more than that it was a moment authored by a black man who worked in Atlanta, the city where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born and rose to prominence and is buried. Had Eddie Mathews, say, been the Brave who overtook the Babe, it would have been a great sports feat. Because it was Aaron, an African-American against whom some had rooted because he was African-American, it was bigger than sports, greater than great. It was perfect.
This city was still in its first decade as a big-league burg on April 8, 1974. Aaron’s 715th was the first vivid memory most Americans have of Atlanta sports. The Braves have since won a World Series and the A-T-L has staged an Olympiad, but somebody wins the World Series every year and there’s always another Olympics around the corner. Hank Aaron, Atlantan, was the first to 715, and No. 715 was struck in Atlanta. The Braves may be moving, but the moment is fixed in history.
If the Cobb County Braves want to honor Aaron with a different statue, that’s fine and dandy. But not this statue. This statue should belong, forever and ever, to Atlanta.
