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| May 1975: Hank Aaron takes infield practice with the Milwaukee Brewers at Detroit's Tiger Stadium. (Photo by Tom Hagerty) |
Former Detroit Tiger Tony Clark, today the executive director of the MLB players association, called it “a profoundly sad day for baseball.”
Aaron, who started his big-league career in the Negro Leagues with the Indianapolis Clowns in 1952, never spent much time in Detroit. Long before interleague play was adopted in 1997, Aaron played 21 seasons (1954-74) with the National League’s Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves, appearing only once at Tiger Stadium, in the 1971 All-Star Game.
Aaron's idol Jackie Robinson appeared only once at Tiger Stadium (then known as Briggs Stadium), when he helped lead the National League to victory over George Kell and the American League in the 1951 All-Star Game.
That same year, an 18-year-old Aaron embarked on his storied journey from Mobile to Indianapolis.
Twenty years later, in his only appearance as a National Leaguer in Detroit, in the 1971 midsummer classic at Tiger Stadium, Aaron famously hit a home run off of AL starter Vida Blue:
Moments later, Aaron was standing in right field when Oakland A’s slugger Reggie Jackson hit an epic blast off Dock Ellis that hit the light tower.
Aaron never even flinched.
Retired Negro Leaguer and future Hall of Famer Turkey Stearnes was a regular at Tiger Stadium in those days, where he often watched games from his perch in the centerfield bleachers. His daughter Joyce Stearnes Thompson fondly recalls her father's perspective on Aaron.
"Dad said he knew Hank was going to break Babe Ruth's record and that he was going to break even more records," she says.
Two years later, in 1973, as Aaron was closing in on Babe Ruth's all-time home run record, Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell even wrote a song about Aaron, recorded by Tigers pitcher Bill Slayback and later by singer Richard "Popcorn" Wylie.
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| Hank Aaron hits historic home run number 715 off L.A. Dodgers pitcher Al Downing, April 8, 1974, at Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium. |
After breaking Ruth's home run record in Atlanta in 1974, Aaron returned to Wisconsin to close out his major-league career, playing his final two seasons for the American League’s Milwaukee Brewers from 1975-76. With the AL's new designated hitter rule in effect, Aaron visited Detroit as the Brewers' DH a few times a year to take on the division rival Tigers in a battle of AL East cellar dwellers.
“He was the greatest home run hitter ever,” says former Tigers slugger Ron LeFlore, who played against Aaron in his final two seasons. “Barry Bonds passed him, but Hank was the best. He played in the deadball era of the ’50s and ’60s. After that, they started tightening up the seams, and the ball started going further."
Aaron's final career at-bat came against the Tigers on Oct. 3, 1976, before a crowd of 6,858 at Milwaukee County Stadium. In the bottom of the sixth of a 5-2 Tigers victory, Aaron smacked an RBI infield single off Tigers starter Dave Roberts and then Brewers manager Alex Grammas lifted him for a pinch-runner.
Historian Tom Stanton, author of The Final Season and Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America, recalls Aaron's historic chase of the Bambino's record.
“To a generation of us former kids," Stanton says, "Hank Aaron represented not just the sport we loved but decency, fairness and a changing world. He was the central heroic figure in a mid-1970s morality play staged before our young eyes: good vs. evil. Competing for a team in a state that still had a segregationist for lieutenant governor, Aaron battled racism and hatred and endured daily death threats as he pursued sports’ most famous record, held by its most mythologized white legend, Babe Ruth.
