Hank Aaron: Down the Bay

Henry Louis Aaron was born on February fifth, nineteen thirty-four, in the section of Mobile known as Down the Bay, in a house his father had built by hand. The family moved to Toulminville, a working-class neighborhood north of downtown, where he grew up. His father, Herbert Aaron Senior, worked the docks and ran a tavern.

The boy who would hit more home runs than any player in the history of the game learned the mechanics of hitting by swinging a stick at bottle caps. The family could not afford baseball equipment. He attended Central High School and played outfield, helping the team to a Negro High School Championship. His boyhood idol was Jackie Robinson, and he followed Robinson's career the way other boys followed movie serials.

In his junior year, Aaron joined an independent Negro league team, the Prichard Athletics, earning three dollars a game. He later played for the Mobile Black Bears. In nineteen fifty-one, the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League signed him. He batted cross-handed until a teammate corrected his grip. In nineteen fifty-two, the Boston Braves organization purchased his contract, one year before the franchise moved to Milwaukee.

Aaron played in the major leagues until nineteen seventy-six. On April eighth, nineteen seventy-four, he hit his seven hundred and fifteenth home run, surpassing Babe Ruth's career record. He received death threats for months before that moment and required bodyguards at the park. The record stood until two thousand and seven. He died in Mobile in January twenty twenty-one.