Hank Aaron: My Childhood Hero Hank Aaron Gone Bad

As a young boy growing-up in and around Atlanta, Georgia, I was excited when the Atlanta Braves came from Milwaukee to roost here. The only trouble was that they were not very good. Enter Hank Aaron.

No matter how bad those Braves' teams were, Hank was great, and watching his home run count go up was a big deal to many of us. Back then it was always Ruth - Mays - Aaron. They were the all-time leaders.

Getting past 714 was the goal (although at the time it might have been a great symbolic thing if Aaron had eventually stopped at 714 as a gesture of race equality and harmony, and made a speech to that effect). None-the-less, we were all overjoyed when hank hit #715 off of Al Downing in April of '74.

I admired Hank Aaron very much, and felt awful at the racism he and the other minority players had always faced, and to some extent still were - and the terrible stuff we do not know about but can only imagine. At the time he was a good fella, it seemed, and a great sport about it all.

These days Hank has lost his luster, in my eyes. Why? I have seen and heard him berate Republican/Christian Political Philosophy and support evil people and candidates, as a Liberal (evidently). This on the field hero has let me and so many others down with his anti-White talk 
(my view) and Liberal opinions.

The late Furman Bisher was once going to help me to meet Hank Aaron at a car dealership to ask him questions about a particular minor league game in which he played against my uncle (the late Bill Hall), and was supposedly thrown out stealing by him a number of times before either made the Major League. In the end, I did not even bother to pursue it.

I can thank "Hammerin' Henry" for great childhood memories, but in a way I am sad that I ever liked him so much. I am simply being honest.