Baseball Bean Berry Berry Good to Me...

Barry hit 755 and A-Rod hit 500 over the weekend...One more and Barry breaks Hammerin' Hank Aaron's all-time homerun record, which Henry wrestled away from The Babe in April of 1974. Barry will most certainly hit the inevitable "records-were-made-to-be-broken" magical #756, perhaps before this blog is posted,, and his less than warm, fuzzy relationship with the public and press, and his alleged juicing notwithstanding, it will be a hallowed baseball moment...At least it will be for me. See, I had this love affair with baseball long before I recognized how deep blue Vickie Roy's eyes were sitting beside me in my 4th grade class at Howell Park Elementary. Aaron, Mays, Mantle, Ford, Dean, Feller, Dimagio, and Williams were the objects of my affection. I had all of their cards, I combed the boxscores every daybreak in The Morning Advocate just minutes after the paper boy deftly deposited it at the foot of the holly bush beside our driveway... and they were the ones who had me out on our neighborhood sandlot, every daylight hour of every summer vacation day. I loved baseball...I still do...so yes, I care about the homerun record, but it is much more for me about Hank Aaron's name resurfacing for another generation of baseball fans to know and appreciate a genuine real life superstar and sports hero. He came along just a few years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, so he also faced many of the same injustices and endured many of the same hardships that all African-American players faced in those early days. His first professional baseball paycheck came with the Indianapolis Clowns of the storied Negro leagues. He led them to a championship in his rookie year and was signed by the Boston Braves who moved to Milwaukee not long after Hank became a Brave. He was a natural 5-tool (hitting for average, hitting for power, catching, throwing and running) gifted athlete, and although he had great success in the Negro League and the minors hitting crosshanded...left hand over right... he still became a quiet, but powerful leader in the game. I distinctly remember the fall of '67 when Robert "Hiya" Didier came back to our one of our fall baseball practices. Hiya had been an all-state catcher for us the two previous years while I was a freshman and a sophomore. In those two years we were the Louisiana state champions the first year and we had been eliminated in the state semis the next. Hiya was one of the main reasons for our success. He was smart behind the plate, handled pitchers like a sports psychologist, had a cannon for an arm and literally attacked the ball when he was at bat. He was the finest all around player I ever was on the field with in high school or college. He was drafted by the Atlanta Braves right out of high school and he was back that fall to visit us and tell us what his first spring training was like with the Braves. We wanted to talk about him and his first training camp...all he wanted to talk about was Hank Aaron...what a classy guy he was...how he yanked pitches a foot off the plate 450 feet into the left field upper deck, and how he had the strongest, quickest wrists of anyone he'd ever seen. I wasn't there to see Hank, but listening to "Hiya" I sure imagined I was, and my respect and admiration for him grew. Everyone knew, both during and after Hank was quietly chasing down Ruth's record, that he endured ridicule for his audacity as a black man to erase the hallowed Babe Ruth's longstanding record,and even received death threats...and yet he handled it all with dignity and class.

Yup. Barry will break Henry Aaron's career homerun record by a few...maybe even a lot... and that record will probably be broken by the same A-Rod who hit his 500th homerun on Saturday when Barry tied Hank, but neither will ever replace the gentleman hero, Hammerin' Hank Aaron...my hero 45 years ago...my hero today...

Pling...Pling...

dg