Well, it’s time to say goodbye to the long baseball season, as the Texas Rangers and Hanshin Tigers were crowned champions in their perspective leagues. It may be also time for Shotime to say sayonara to Los Angeles as he looks for a new contract, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto to say farewell to Nippon as he makes a new start in the MLB. This season had a lot of good and bad memories (as my beloved Braves didn’t quite reach their ultimate goal of winning a championship). Probably the most iconic player in Braves history was Henry “Hank” Aaron. On April 8, 1974 he hit his 715th homerun to break the record of most homers set by Babe Ruth. There was a lot of pressure on him that year as many did not want to see him break Ruth’s record. He received numerous racist and even death threats. But he remembered as a young boy in Alabama hitting bottle caps and crushed cans with a broomstick as he didn’t have a bat and ball. “When I look back on my life, I can see that all through my childhood I was being prepared to play baseball,” he said. “Hammerin’ Hank,” swung hard, that night and hit the ball over the fence for a home run. It was the 715th homer of his career, making him baseball’s all-time homerun king. “I was in my own little world at the time,” Aaron said when circling the bases. “It was like I was running in a bubble and I could see all these people jumping up and down and waving their arms in slow motion. . . . I was told I had a big smile on my face as I came around third. I purposely never smiled as I ran the bases after a home run, but I suppose I couldn’t help it that time.” This was a memory that as an 11-year-old I will never forget. Without question, he was one of the greatest players in the history of the Atlanta Braves.
Rick
*Quotes taken from the book, Atlanta Braves by Brian Howell