Carson Park, Where Hank Aaron Started

Carson Park sits on a peninsula on Half Moon Lake in Eau Claire, and baseball has been played here since nineteen thirty-seven. The stadium holds thirty-eight hundred fans and has a relaxed, timeless feel. What makes it famous is what happened on June fourteenth, nineteen fifty-two, when an eighteen-year-old from Mobile, Alabama named Hank Aaron played his first professional game here as shortstop for the Eau Claire Bears, a Class C affiliate of the Boston Braves.

Aaron hit three hundred thirty-six that season, won Rookie of the Year in the Northern League, and made the All-Star team. The rest, as they say, is history: seven hundred fifty-five career home runs, the all-time record for thirty-three years. A bronze statue of the teenage Aaron stands outside the stadium today, unveiled in nineteen ninety-four with Hank himself in attendance.