A World Without Aaron

The crack of the bats and the sounds of baseballs slapping into worn leather gloves will be more predominant in the mythical Field of Dreams this spring.

They say the field, an actual baseball diamond cut into a cornfield in eastern Iowa and made immortal in the movie “Field of Dreams,” is where the players who have passed away go to play the game for eternity.

Yesterday, the lineup at the Field added one of the greatest players of all time. Henry Aaron died at the age of 86 and although I never met him, it was one of the more sad passings I felt since this onslaught of our baseball heroes leaving us.

In 2020, 110 major leaguers have died, including some of the great ones. In a span of 42 days last year, we lost five Hall of Fame members when Lou Brock, Whitey Ford, Bob Gibson, Joe Morgan and Tom Seaver all passed away. Three other Hall of Famers, Detroit Tigers outfield Al Kaline died last April and Phil Niekro and Dick Allen both died in December.

This year began with the loss of pitchers Don Larsen and Don Sutton and Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda.

And now Aaron is gone. I’ve been out of the news business for nearly two years, but I still have apps on my phone that constantly blurp out breaking news stories. When I saw that Aaron had died when I was at work, I teared up.

Aaron was my favorite player. When I kicked off the 1965 APBA baseball replay last month, I mentioned here a story that I had heard about him when I was a child living in Madison, Wisc. Aaron’s wrists, the legend went, were so strong he could knock baseballs through outfield walls. When my parents would go to Milwaukee, I’d sit in the back of our station wagon, peering at anything that looked like a baseball wall, regardless of it was, to see if there were baseball-sized holes in them.

My family moved to Arkansas on April 8, 1974, the day Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record. We had left northern Minnesota on April 4 and were trapped in a snowstorm in Minneapolis that afternoon, delaying us a day. I worried that we’d miss seeing Aaron’s historic homer. We made it to a rental house we were staying at in the new town while we waited on the movers to bring the furniture. I turned on the small black and white television there, pivoted the “rabbit ears” antenna and tried to tune in the game from a Springfield, Mo., television station.

In the snowy static that was pretty much fare for television in rural Arkansas in those days, I watched as Al Downing threw to Aaron in the fourth inning and then saw the ball sail into the stands, giving Aaron the home run crown of all time.

There’s a photograph of that homer hanging in the bedroom now. Most people have pictures of Jesus or whoever the president is or family portraits as decoration. I have Aaron’s famed shot. Holly, my wife, is okay with that.

As a side note to that event, I had drawn stars around Aaron’s picture in my 1974 baseball Cord Communications preview book. I traced a line of the trajectory of Aaron’s hit ball and wrote: “715. Home Run King,” with fireworks blasting around it. I had just started eighth grade in the rural Arkansas school in mid-April and a classmate wanted to see the book. I wanted friends, so I handed him the book. He opened it up, saw my drawn tribute to Aaron and then said one of the viler, racist things I’ve heard.

“Are you a n—lover,” he asked me in a mocking sneer. Welcome to Arkansas 

I was shocked. Aaron transcended race, I thought, color didn’t matter. Aaron was just a baseball player, not someone defined by race. I was ignorant, I guess; I didn’t even realize until years later the hatred he faced while pursuing Ruth’s record because he was a black man.

And, another story.  I was in the airport in Atlanta in 2006. I jokingly asked a worker there if she had seen Henry Aaron lately just to say something. She said she had seen him just the week prior. Twenty-one years after he retired, Aaron was still a celebrity in Atlanta and was recognized by someone probably half his age.

As I roll the 1965 baseball replay, I’ve noticed just how many players from this season have passed away in the past months. Morgan leads off for the Reds in 1965. Milwaukee has lost four players this year with Aaron, Niekro, second baseman Frank Bolling and shortstop Dennis Menke.

I understand how this happens, of course. Those of us who saw these players as our heroes are now getting old ourselves. These players are that age when people start dying. Aaron was 86. Ford was a few weeks shy of turning 92 when he passed away. It’s inevitable; death happens. But it’s sad and perhaps it’s a reminder of our own mortality.

As it seems to always happen within the magic of APBA, the next games on the 1965 schedule set to play today were a doubleheader featuring Philadelphia at Milwaukee. Aaron went 0-8 with two strikeouts and the Braves lost both games to drop the team’s record to 7-10. Aaron has only hit one home run so far in those 17 games, but he’s batting .348 with 11 RBIs. It was a bad day statistically for him, but he had bad days in the real game. He'll slug more home runs in my replay, I'm sure.

Those who have died the past year field a formidable team, a Field of Dreams All-Star group if there ever was one with Aaron anchoring the outfield, Morgan at second,  Seaver on the mound and Lasorda in the dugout.

We now live in a world without Henry Aaron and that’s sad. Maybe that’s one reason we’ve played APBA for decades since being introduced to the game as children. When I pick up the APBA dice, I enter a world where he’s still alive and swinging the bat, those strong wrists of his busting holes in outfield walls.