What Young People Can Learn From Henry ‘Hank’ Aaron
His life is one for the record books
Henry “Hank” Aaron first came to my attention in the 1957 World Series — a few days shy of my sixth birthday.
The ’57 World Series was the first baseball game my family ever watched on a television set. We were farmers, and before then, radio had beamed information and entertainment into our farmhouse for about 40 years.
Family members debated the decision to purchase our first television. It allowed us to see with our eyes the picture of the words we heard on the radio. That clinched the decision to spring for a black-and-white TV set, especially once a late-season home run in the 11th inning by Aaron clinched the National League pennant for the Milwaukee Braves. Seeing Aaron and Billy Burton perform admirably in the outfield and with the bat lit a spark in my six-year-old eyes that I could one day play baseball, too.
And seeing that Aaron and Burton looked like me, a baseball player is what I wanted to be.
Usually, the games that radio broadcast into our hamlet in middle Georgia featured the New York Yankees. I had no idea what the Yankees looked like, but I knew their names: Mantle, Martin, Rizzuto, McDougald, Berra, Ford, and the…
