ining camp. During the camp, the roster was determined and Aaron was not on it. However, being the type of person that he was, he stayed around just to practice with the team. It turns out that this was the best decision of his career because later that spring, the Braves’ left fielder broke his ankle. This opened a spot on the team. The next day, Aaron started in his place and got three hits, including a line-drive homerun. Because of his success, the manager offered Aaron a contract to play for the Braves. By the end of the 1973 season, he had 713 career homeruns, one less than the all-time record. During the off-season, Aaron received a lot of hate mail and death threats, mostly from people who did not want to see a black man break Babe Ruth’s record. Aaron was quoted as saying, “As the hate mail piled up, I became more and more intent on breaking the record and shoving it into the ugly faces of those bigots” (Aaron). “On the night of April 8, 1974, at 9:07 PM, Henry Aaron hit a fastball off of Al Downing that flew over the left field fence for homerun number 715” (Aaron). Aaron ended his career with 755 homeruns. He also played in 3298 games, batted 12,364 times, had 3771 hits, had a .305 batting average, and won three Gold Gloves. He led the National League in RBI’s four times, and in HR’s four times. He won the Rookie of the Year award in his first professional season. In 1975, he was given the Spingarn Medal, which is given out by the NAACP every year. It is like an achievement award. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1982 and his 715th homerun was recently voted the Greatest Moment in Baseball History. Although Henry Aaron was a great baseball player, he was also a hard worker. He had to overcome a lot of adversity to get where he is today. He was a black man that grew up in a poor neighborhood during the Great Depression. It was very tough. How many people ...
