On this date — April 8, 1974 — my baseball hero, Hank Aaron, hit his 715th home run, thus breaking Babe Ruth’s long-standing record of 714. Baseball was my thing. I loved that sport. I found out a few years later, playing on the high school team, that I really wasn’t very talented. But I loved it — almost as much as Nebraska football. That’s another story .
In April of ’74, I was about a month away from turning thirteen. Yes, thirteen and fourteen were tough years. They were the kind of years that many adults try to forget. Embarrassing, self-conscious, and very nerdy.
We had moved from Clarksville, TN to Onawa, IA. My two primary interests, as stated above, were Hank Aaron / Atlanta Braves and the Nebraska Cornhuskers. It felt like Onawa was about as far away from Atlanta as I could get. No one else in my class “got” the Hank Aaron thing. Hank was such a class act — a great ballplayer, very consistent (twenty years of twenty or more homers), and a nice guy. I saw him hit a home run in Atlanta, and he answered my mail for an autographed picture. One of my kids has it now.
Ironically, Onawa was also about as close to Nebraska as you could get, being near the Missouri River (which separates Nebraska and Iowa). From Onawa, the drive to Decatur, Nebraska was something like four miles. The drive to Omaha (along I-29) was about an hour. The drive to Lincoln (through Omaha on I-80) was about two hours. I went to college in Lincoln; my siblings followed me there; and my parents, one grandmother, one great grandfather, and a raft of uncles, aunts, and cousins of various “removed” states were there. I went to probably 9 or 10 games before going to college there.
So my classmates in Clarksville also liked Hank Aaron and they tolerated Nebraska. After all, we rarely played U. of Tennessee. We didn’t win our first two championships until ’70 and ’71, so my Clarksville pals didn’t really have time to get tired of hearing about Nebraska all the time.
My Onawa friends, however, were so tired of Nebraska’s success. To make things worse, THEIR teams — Iowa State or U. Iowa — were pretty miserable back in the day. They didn’t have a lot to cheer about. They weren’t good sports through it all. They just teased and taunted a lot.
Hank was worthy of being labeled “hero.” The racial hate that he had to endure was nearly overwhelming. It was abominable that such ill feelings could exist in a modern society — just as the animosity toward Israel in the present day is horrible.
But, I digress. Don’t feel bad. I could have written a whole lot more (and I will), but I tried to restrain myself.
Cheers, and congrats, Hank. You da man!