"Bad Henry" Aaron was a marvel

The Braves' great slugger would have been 91 this week

EDITOR’S NOTE: Hank Aaron’s historic duel with Don Drysdale is one chapter in my forthcoming baseball book, “Diamond Duels” released on Lyons Press on March 4. Here’s a bit more about the hitter many MLB pitchers referred to as “Bad Henry.”

For some 50 baseball seasons, he unquestionably held the top spot with no contender in sight. It was him, all alone at the top, seated atop Mount Everest in the baseball record books.

Then a San Francisco Giants’ rookie, a pitcher! supplanted him. When Giants’ pitcher Dave Aardsma made his major-league debut on April 6, 2004, he took Aaron’s place as the first player listed alphabetically in the all-time register of the sport.

Aaron was almost certainly unaware that he had been overtaken by the letter “d” but having watched him throughout his career — even interviewing him once —- if there was a more gracious man in the history of the sport, it could only have been Stan Musial.

Hank Aaron’s rookie card. He was called “Henry” then.

I only got to see Aaron play once and that was in his initial appearance in the American League, DH-ing for the Milwaukee Brewers on a Tuesday afternoon, April 8, 1975. That day was particularly memorable because it was the only day in my entire academic career that I skipped school.

It was an emergency, of course. Not only was Tony Conigliaro returning to the Boston Red Sox lineup after his horrific eye injury in 1967, it was Hank Aaron’s first appearance in Fenway Park. I mean, high school classes are all right and everything but this was HANK AARON.

And sure enough, there he was on the field, batting third against Red Sox starter Luis Tiant. And there was Tony C. (Conigliaro) who had miraculously worked his way back into the Red Sox lineup after a Jack Hamilton fastball shattered his cheekbone and ruined, at least for a while, the eyesight out of his left eye on a dark August afternoon eight long years earlier. Now he was back and here was Aaron, in the flesh.

Speaking of flesh, Aaron was no longer the whippet he used to be. That was the first thing I noticed. He was no kid. He worked Tiant for a walk in the first inning but the cagey Tiant owned him from then, getting him to foul out to third, bounce out to short and hit one right back to Tiant in the 8th. (Luis pitched a complete game. On Opening Day. Yeah, it was that long ago.)

It was a strange game. HOFer Robin Yount reached Tiant for a HR, the Red Sox got a run on a 1st-and-3rd double steal, HOFer Carl Yastrzemski stealing home after Conigliaro singled to right off a Jim Slaton curveball. Bob Montgomery, the Red Sox catcher notable for being the last guy in MLB history to take an at without a helmet, was the hitting star with two hits, including a double.

Fast forward maybe 15 years later, I’m working for the Port Huron Times Herald in Michigan and for some reason, I’m in the Detroit airport just strolling along and bingo, sitting by himself, waiting at an empty gate with the sunlight beaming in through the roof shining directly on him, like it was a movie effect, there sat Hank Aaron. All by himself. No attendants, assistants, PR flaks. Just him. Sitting there quietly.

I almost couldn’t believe it. I stopped, approached respectfully, explained that I was Sports Editor of the Times Herald and could we chat for a few moments?

“Sit down,” he said, smiling as if he was greeting an old friend. And this is HANK AARON, I’m thinking to myself. I told him I’d skipped school to see his American League debut in Boston. He smiled.

“Loooie,” he shook his head. “That guy was tricky." Aaron faced him six times in his career, got a double the next year.

I asked him about batting cross-handed, which he did when he started out.

“I probably would have broken my wrists if I’d have kept on,” he laughed. “It just seemed natural to me at the time.”

He was in Detroit to present the Hank Aaron Award and evidently, traveled alone. No bodyguards, no hangers-on, no entourage. We chatted for a while about baseball, his career. It was probably less of an interview than a friendly conversation and he could not have been more gracious. It was so nice to meet such an important person in the history of the game who was just as nice as you hoped he would be.

If I’d only have known then what I know now, I would have dug in and asked more questions. Hank Aaron has a whole chapter in my forthcoming baseball book “Diamond Duels” devoted to his lifelong duel with the Dodgers’ great side-arming righthander Don Drysdale. It was epic.

Come to find out, Aaron started his career against the big righthander 1-for-23. As a wide-eyed rookie, he was 1-for-18 against the nasty sidearming slinger in 1956, then was 0-for-7 the following season. And Drysdale, obviously seemed to know how to get him out. He threw inside. WAY inside. In his 14-year-MLB career, Drysdale hit 154 batters, 20th all time, and as often as he knocked Aaron down, sometimes twice in an at bat, he never hit him. But it wasn’t like he didn’t try.

Aaron ended up facing him 249 times. Drysdale fanned him 47 times, way more than Hank fanned against anyone else, but Aaron reached him for 17 HRs, more than he hit off of any other pitcher.

In Aaron’s book “Hammer” he explained his dilemma.

“I batted so poorly against Drysdale at first that Fred Haney, our manager at the time, was going to bench me one day when he pitched,” Aaron recalled. “Back then, sitting on the bench for a day wasn't like it is now. Now, with the guaranteed contracts and diluted rosters, guys are happy to get the day off. But back then, nobody wanted to come out of the lineup, because there was always somebody eager to take your place.

I said, “Mr. Haney, you just let me play against him today. I can't sit on the bench. I've got to play.”

“Drysdale got me the first couple of times that day - struck me out and made me look bad — and then I got a couple of hits. The last one was a bloop double that won the ball game. From that day on, I hit Drysdale.”

That Aaron-Drysdale duel was just one of a bunch of them in “Diamond Duels” which takes an in-depth look at some of the great pitcher-hitter showdowns in baseball history. In a way, it’s akin to my previous baseball book “Last Time Out” in the sense that they’re undiscovered stories. I’ve followed baseball for 60 years, read more baseball books than I can count and I didn’t know any of this stuff. You won’t either.

Did you know Stan Musial batted 356 times against Warren Spahn? Or that Whitey Ford had 30 fewer lifetime starts against the Boston Red Sox, the Yankees’ arch-rival than his starts against the Chicago White Sox? Or that one Hall of Fame player you’d probably never thought about won two batting titles with stunning last-day doubleheader performances, collecting six hits in a DH to end one season, a stunning seven in another DH to win his last batting crown? And there’s much more…

By the way, for his career, Aaron hit .318 against lefties, .298 for righties, .304 at home, .306 on the road and monthly, he was a metronome - .297 in April, .298 in May, .305 in June, .310 in July, .310 in August, .307 in September/October. That’s consistency!

You can read a lot more about Hank Aaron’s matchup vs. Don Drysdale and whole lot of other ones in “Diamond Duels” which will be out March 4. The book is available now on pre-order from Amazon. We’ll talk more about it as we get closer to the release date. THANKS!