Four days prior, Mr. Aaron had tied Babe Ruth’s career homer record of 714. And now, here it was — April 8, 1974 — and the Braves were appearing on Monday Night Baseball with a game against the Dodgers. Pitching for the Dodgers was their #44, Al Downing. Aaron, coincidentally, was the Braves’ #44.
This moment — this culmination of many moments — was something for which I had been waiting several years. I was 13, almost 14 at the time, and my adolescent hormones had me by throat. I was moody, picky, and obnoxiously arrogant. Oh, and stubborn. At least that’s how I remember myself. Actually, I guess I haven’t changed much. I was teased at school, sometimes a lot, about my devotion to Hank Aaron. I had moved from Tennessee to Iowa in 1972, and I guess Tennessee was closer enough to Atlanta that there were fewer Aaron devotees in Iowa.
Anyway, as stated in an earlier post, I had waited ALL WINTER for Aaron to have another at-bat. I remember, oddly, standing on the boardwalk of the second story of my dad’s lumber yard’s “wood shed,” where was stored the stacks of standard-sized lumber (2x4s, 2x6s, and 2x8s, lengths at 8, 12, 14, and 16 feet; we kept 2x10s and 2x12s in another shed). The winter had been cold, damp, and miserable.
But, as these things tend to go, just as the weather turned from bad to delightful, similarly MLB was turning from OFF to ON. The season opened for the Braves on April 4, 1974 in Cincinnati. Hank Aaron tied Ruth on his first swing of the season. The Braves were scheduled to play two more games in Cincy before returning to Atlanta. The manager decided that Hank should take two days off so that Hank could hit his next home run — the record breaker — at home. The Commissioner of Baseball, Bowie Kuhn, decided that that decision was not a good one. The people of Cincy shouldn’t be denied the opportunity to see the historic home run; the Braves aren’t putting forth their best effort to win; blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda. Wow, the commissioner gravely overstepped his bounds on that one. So he ordered Hank to play both games. Eventually (this whole event occurred over only two days, and it was a huge deal made over nothing), the Braves and the commissioner came to an agreement, and Hank played Saturday but rested Sunday. Actually, I might have that backwards. If anyone cares to look it up, be my guest.
So in Atlanta, there was a hopeful tension in the air, the electricity of knowing you’re in the presence of something great about to happen, in the midst of history being made.
In his first at-bat that night, he walked. Downing didn’t give him any pitches that were hittable. His first pitch to Hank, on Hank’s next at bat, was too, hitting (or almost hitting) the dirt. Downing’s second pitch, though, was a slow fastball down the middle. Hank launched the ball, and it landed in the Atlanta bullpen. Actually, one of the Braves’ pitchers, Tom House, caught the ball on the fly. (That’s why the Braves were able to get the ball to Hank so quickly.)
I had been watching the game with my grandmother, Grandma Berry. She wanted to watch it because she knew it was important to me. I had set up my little Craig cassette player so I could record the audio from the television. We had no generally available direct track recording device (not sold at Sears or Radio Shack or department stores back in the day), so we did it via just the air. That is, we listened to the TV, and the TVs sound was picked up by the cassette player. So I told Grandma that she could watch the game with me, but she had to keep quiet. I was serious about that. And she complied.
I still have the two cassette tapes, but I don’t have a good cassette player any more. Actually, I do have an old Craig cassette player … it might be fun to take the tapes and try to listen. They’ll (the tapes) will probably shred.
Incidentally, I remember watching several other events with Grandma. We watched the Kentucky Derby together, the year when Secratariat won it in record time. We watched a Nebraska-Oklahoma game together. We watched the Nebraska-Army game that previous fall. And we sometimes would sneak away and watch Monty Python, which she loved.
My Hank Aaron scrap book got filled as I put in news from all the articles cou ld find. Teachers at school would give me articles they saw in Boys Life, Time Magazine, and others. It was a great moment.
I felt victorious. I felt that all my effort in being a faithful fan — I even wrote Hank and asked for his autograph, and he sent me an autographed pictute that one of my kids now possesses — had resulted in this glorious moment.
It was a great evening of baseball.
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