The Last Hero_ A Life Of Henry Aaron Part 14

"I don't know if I'm talking out of school,202 but Rico just rubbed guys the wrong way," t.i.to Francona said. "But Rico was kind of a s...o...b..at and a loudmouth. but Rico just rubbed guys the wrong way," t.i.to Francona said. "But Rico was kind of a s...o...b..at and a loudmouth.

"He had loads of talent, but not many guys liked him. I remember one day we're in the clubhouse and he's got eighty eighty pairs of shoes, all different styles and colors," Francona recalled. "And some of the guys are laughing, and some are just looking at him. So, I go over to Felipe Alou and I say, 'Hey, what's pairs of shoes, all different styles and colors," Francona recalled. "And some of the guys are laughing, and some are just looking at him. So, I go over to Felipe Alou and I say, 'Hey, what's with with this guy?' And Felipe looks at me and says, 'Well, what would this guy?' And Felipe looks at me and says, 'Well, what would you you do if you had been living in the jungle your whole life?'" do if you had been living in the jungle your whole life?'"

There was one other thing: Henry hated the word n.i.g.g.e.r n.i.g.g.e.r. Whites had used it his entire life as a way of reducing black ambitions and self-esteem. But now in the 1960s, as blacks grew more empowered and less fearful of the old guard, many young blacks called each other "n.i.g.g.e.rs," if not always as a sign of camaraderie, then certainly of familiarity. Joe Torre recalled Henry tensing whenever Carty tested the limits of obnoxiousness.

Then came the famous day, June 18, 1967, when it all erupted. It was on the team plane, flying from Houston to Los Angeles, the Braves collectively smarting after being no-hit by the Astros Don Wilson. Mike de la Hoz, Henry, and Carty were sitting in the back of the plane, while t.i.to Francona dozed in and out of sleep, vaguely interested in their game of hearts. De la Hoz always kept a bottle of rum in his satchel and during the game got a little rowdy. Henry told de la Hoz to put the bottle away, or some words to that effect. Francona, who had been with the club for less than a week, recalled the precise moment when the gunpowder had been sparked: Carty mumbling words in Henry's direction to the menacing effect of "I wish that bottle was mine." Somewhere during the exchange,203 Joe Torre recalled hearing Carty refer to Henry as a "black slick." Joe Torre recalled hearing Carty refer to Henry as a "black slick."

And in a flash, Henry Aaron and Rico Carty were throwing haymakers, big punches from big men with bad intentions, Henry an overhand right that dented the overhead luggage compartment above Carty's head, Carty connecting with a shot that struck Henry's forehead, Henry returning the favor. t.i.to Francona, now awake, stood between the two punching teammates, along with the traveling secretary, four-foot-two inch Donald Davidson, trying to keep from getting slugged.

"Then the copilot comes rushing back and wants to know what the h.e.l.l is going on," Francona recalled. "He said he thought there was an emergency, because all the weight of the plane had shifted to the back. It wasn't an emergency. It was the whole team trying to keep those two guys from killing each other."

That was it for Carty and Aaron. No more mentoring. No more cards. From that day forward, Ralph Garr recalled, "Rico was just another teammate."

"A lot of guys would brag about the fight, or keep it alive," Francona said. "But you know what Henry said about it? Henry said the thing that upset him the most was that he embarra.s.sed himself. He used to say it was the most embarra.s.sing moment of his life."

TO THE GUYS who mattered, the ones who played the game and bled the game and, as the bars closed, wept drunkenly because their pa.s.sion for baseball was far greater than their actual ability to play it, the word who mattered, the ones who played the game and bled the game and, as the bars closed, wept drunkenly because their pa.s.sion for baseball was far greater than their actual ability to play it, the word superstar superstar was no easy term, cavalierly tossed around like a Player of the Week award. In later years, when Marvin Miller broke management's hold over the players and the baseball free market became the envy of athletes (and union members) everywhere, money was often seen as the determining factor of worth. Even the average player who signed deals with too many zeros on the check to count believed that being paid like a superstar offered instant membership to the club. was no easy term, cavalierly tossed around like a Player of the Week award. In later years, when Marvin Miller broke management's hold over the players and the baseball free market became the envy of athletes (and union members) everywhere, money was often seen as the determining factor of worth. Even the average player who signed deals with too many zeros on the check to count believed that being paid like a superstar offered instant membership to the club.

They were dead wrong, of course, and deep down in their collective heart, they knew it: There was room for only a handful on the A-list.

Superstars, the precious ones who lived in the penthouse of the Hall of Fame, were different, and with the word came a responsibility that went far beyond just talent. Being in the Hall of Fame wasn't enough, and the players themselves were the best (or worst) at parsing and policing. Nellie Fox would enter the Hall of Fame, and so would Don Sutton. But that didn't make them peers of Rogers Hornsby or Christy Mathewson.

The A-listers were different, went about their business differently, from the silent sweat of Musial, the power and bombast of Ruth, the demanding elegance of DiMaggio to the furious pride of Robinson and Clemente. They could simply do things on a baseball diamond that defied the abilities of the other 99.9 percent. But the A-listers all had one thing in common: Each went to the World Series. If they didn't play for the big prize every year like the New York stars, then at least once in their careers the best of the best turned into a pack mule, carrying the franchise and the city to the top of the sport. They were the ones whose talent placed them in the millionth percentile, the ones who by simply being on a team meant the difference between winning and losing.

The experts would always say that for this one sport, baseball, one man could never be a true difference maker. How, then, to explain why in baseball the cream of the game, virtually without exception, always played for a championship? All of the New York superstars, from Ruth, DiMaggio and Mantle of the Yankees to McGraw and Mays of the Giants to Robinson and Koufax of the Dodgers played in the World Series multiple times. Hornsby? Cobb? Wagner? Greenberg? Foxx? Killebrew? Frank Robinson? Check. Stan Musial played in the Series in 1942, 1943, 1944, and 1946, Feller in 1948 and 1954, and Walter Johnson in 1924 and 1925. Clemente went twice, won twice. Even the big-spending, no-result Red Sox went to the Series in 1946, and MVP Ted Williams was the engine. Henry Aaron played in consecutive World Series before he was twenty-five.

There were more A-listers in football (Simpson, Fouts, Sanders, Sayers, to name a few) who never played for it all than there were in baseball, so the facts trumped the folklore after all: Top-shelf baseball greats took their teams to the heights. Past or present, sixteen teams or three divisions and a wild card, the era did not matter: Carlton, Schmidt, Jackson, Rose, Morgan, Kaline, Brett, Yastrzemski, Clemens, Henderson, Jeter, Maddux, Winfield, Pujols, and Alex Rodriguez-all of them played for a t.i.tle at least once.

History wouldn't yet be finished with Ken Griffey, Jr., but for the guys who hung up the spikes for good, the great exception was Ernie Banks. Banks was the smiling amba.s.sador of Chicago baseball, and he had toiled diligently, never once having a team rally around him in return for his years of goodwill. For Banks's first ten years in the big leagues, the Cubs never even finished .500, never better than fifth place. In 1967 and 1968, with Leo Durocher revived and running the show, the Cubs finished third, and thus it was with shock and amazement throughout baseball that during the 1969 campaign it was the Chicago Cubs who were running away toward the pennant.

THE YEAR 1969 was all about change and reaction, from a nation still reeling over the Kennedy and King a.s.sa.s.sinations to protesting (or avoiding) the war in Vietnam to a man walking on the moon. And this was time for baseball, as well. The combination of television, football, and its own slow mora.s.s had rendered baseball yesterday's game. With baseball in desperate need of a paint job, the powers gave the grand old game a makeover: an east and west division in both leagues, with a best-of-five round of play-offs between the divisions' winners for entry into the World Series, plus a lowering of the pitcher's mound to give the hitters a better chance to hit the ball, an essential act of the sport that occurred less frequently during the 1960s of Gibson, Marichal, and Koufax. 1969 was all about change and reaction, from a nation still reeling over the Kennedy and King a.s.sa.s.sinations to protesting (or avoiding) the war in Vietnam to a man walking on the moon. And this was time for baseball, as well. The combination of television, football, and its own slow mora.s.s had rendered baseball yesterday's game. With baseball in desperate need of a paint job, the powers gave the grand old game a makeover: an east and west division in both leagues, with a best-of-five round of play-offs between the divisions' winners for entry into the World Series, plus a lowering of the pitcher's mound to give the hitters a better chance to hit the ball, an essential act of the sport that occurred less frequently during the 1960s of Gibson, Marichal, and Koufax.

There were cosmetic nods to the future and one concrete sign of change: Those perennial punch lines, the Mets, were lurking, within striking distance of the Cubs at the all-star break.

But the rest of the year was all about the past. Banks, now in his seventeenth year, in his eighth year as a full-time first baseman, reached back into the vault to fish out one last vestige of what he once was. He would strike out more than one hundred times-a great stain on the players of that era-for the first time in his career and would hit just .253, the lowest he had ever hit up to that point. But Ernie Banks was in a pennant race. And n.o.body thought that the running joke-"We could put a man on the moon before the Cubs reach the World Series"-might actually end in a tie.

On August 31, after the left-hander Ken Holtzman beat Niekro 84 and completed a three-game sweep of the Braves at Wrigley, the Cubs held a four-and-a-half-game lead over the Mets entering the final month of the season. Twelve days before Holtzman beat Niekro, he was no-hitting the Braves at Wrigley when Henry stepped up in the seventh. The wind was blowing in, and Henry still rifled a drive to left that cut through the wind, seemed to bolt out of the park, and broke up the no-hitter and the shutout. Holtzman turned and watched it head toward Waveland Avenue. Billy Williams, the left fielder, stood against the ivy. So much for the no-hitter, Holtzman thought. At least he still had the lead.

But suddenly, the wind began chopping at Henry's ball, beating it back down to the earth and into the field of play. Williams remained leaning against the wall, and the ball, which thousands of eyewitnesses say had once been physically out of the field of play, blew back in, landing in Williams's glove. Holtzman retired the remaining hitters of the final two innings and recorded his first no-hitter.

NEIL A ARMSTRONG and Buzz Aldrin, alas, could relax after all. September, and the Cubs had never come along; eight straight losses to welcome the month later, it was the Mets, who for seven seasons had never done anything but lose, who were in control of the division, staring at the play-offs. New York would win one hundred games, win the division by eight over the broken Cubs, and Ernie Banks would be gone two years later to the land of handshakes and autographs for a living, having retired without ever visiting the promised land. and Buzz Aldrin, alas, could relax after all. September, and the Cubs had never come along; eight straight losses to welcome the month later, it was the Mets, who for seven seasons had never done anything but lose, who were in control of the division, staring at the play-offs. New York would win one hundred games, win the division by eight over the broken Cubs, and Ernie Banks would be gone two years later to the land of handshakes and autographs for a living, having retired without ever visiting the promised land.

Another heirloom dusting occurred during the 1969 season. Nestled amid the Braves' new pinstriped home uniforms, the trading of Joe Torre to the Cardinals for Orlando Cepeda, and the inaugural, geographically challenged National League West, where two of its six teams-Atlanta and Cincinnati-were based in the eastern time zone, was the return of another oldie: Henry Aaron and Willie Mays fighting it out for a pennant.

So much of their circling over the years had been about ability and a place in the pantheon, air most mortals would be grateful just to breathe-Willie always on top in the public imagination, the pay scale, and the proximity to immortality by way of Babe Ruth's all-time home run record, refusing to make even a little bit of room for anyone else, with Henry unfazed by Mays's poetry and stardust, convinced of his ability to chop the wood with anyone ("No way was Willie a better hitter than me,204 no way," he would say) while consistently diffusing the very obvious and very real rivalry that existed between the two men ("I consider us the best of friends," no way," he would say) while consistently diffusing the very obvious and very real rivalry that existed between the two men ("I consider us the best of friends,"205 Henry would tell the Henry would tell the Wall Street Journal) Wall Street Journal).

Mays began the season with 587 home runs, Aaron 510, and the narrative that Willie Mays remained the unquestioned leader of his generation still held. The Braves, meanwhile, tore apart their new division during April, with Henry hitting .397 for the month. The Braves held on to first place, though periodically relinquishing the lead to the Giants, Dodgers, and Reds as if handing off the baton during the 4 x100 relay.

Then, near Memorial Day, Henry suddenly and completely transformed the summer. On May 30, Bill Hands of the Cubs shut out the Braves 20 at Wrigley, the continuation of the common summer theme of the Cubs pounding Atlanta into the dirt. But the next day, after a driving rain held up the game and turned the Wrigley turf into a dishrag, Henry started matters by hitting a two-out homer off Fergie Jenkins in the first. Jenkins and Niekro would engage in a numbing stare-down that wet afternoon, until the ninth, when Niekro blinked-a Ron Santo leadoff triple and a game-winning base hit by Don Young-and the Cubs had won again.

Another day, another loss, but this time without tension: In the finale, Pat Jarvis couldn't get out of the third inning and the Cubs pounded out sixteen hits and three home runs in a 134 blowout.

The Braves were dropping games and the race grew so tight, four teams could soon fit in the phone booth, as if all of baseball popped in new contacts, rubbed its eyes, and for the first time saw the sharpness and burst of colors, the baseball world in true focus, all in the Technicolor form of Henry Aaron.

He had homered in four consecutive games, would hit twelve homers during June off big cats like Jenkins, old friends like Tony Cloninger (who surrendered home run number 531), and the usual a.s.sortment of unlucky no-names. By the end of June, Henry had twenty-one home runs, but it wasn't the impressiveness of his single-season total that had brought him attention, but a quick recognition among those in the sporting world that Henry, not Mays, would be yelling "Timber" when the time came to shout at Ruth.

In the span of forty-five days, after Henry had hit his twenty-ninth home run of the year, a low, serious liner off Tom Seaver, Henry had pa.s.sed Mel Ott, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Eddie Mathews, and Jimmie Foxx on the all-time home-run list. There were only two men left, Mays, still playing at 596 home runs, and Ruth, at 714.

The writers calculated that Henry would also reach the coveted three-thousand-hit plateau inside of a year, a milestone only Musial had reached over the past half century. Before that, you had to go back into the sc.r.a.pbook forty-four years, to Eddie Collins in 1925. Henry had been abandoned when the Braves wheezed during those past summers in Milwaukee and Atlanta and the club was out of the money, but they were alive again, and so was he, rewriting the record book each day he woke up. The Braves barreled into September, unable to shake the Giants but tough enough to avoid swooning themselves, and Sports Ill.u.s.trated Sports Ill.u.s.trated first came looking for Henry, and this was just the start. first came looking for Henry, and this was just the start.

HANK BECOMES A HIT206For years, Henry Aaron performed in comparative obscurity while compiling a record that makes him one of baseball's all time hitters. Now, as Atlanta fights for a pennant, he finds he is famous at last.

And it was there, with the arrival of the austere Sports Ill.u.s.trated Sports Ill.u.s.trated, that the stage for the next act began to take shape, and this stage would be a solo one. Mays would certainly reach six hundred home runs before Henry, but implicit in the story, for the first time on a national scale, was the inevitable pa.s.sing of the torch: Pursuit of Ruth belonged to Henry, not Willie Mays. It was very clear that even when he reached six hundred, Mays certainly did not have 115 more home runs left in him.

That left Henry, and even though the magazine tacitly acknowledged he would run past Mays, it did not seem to believe Ruth was in any danger. "Since he is now 35, it is doubtful that Aaron will stay around long enough to hit the 176 homers he needs to pa.s.s Ruth, but attaining his 3,000th base hit is almost a certainty, and only eight men have ever done that."

Jim Murray, the legendary Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times columnist, who had loved Henry's game since the 1950s, when the rest of the world was focused on Willie, was next. columnist, who had loved Henry's game since the 1950s, when the rest of the world was focused on Willie, was next.

MOVE OVER, BABE207 ... ...

AARON'S PLAYING RIGHTAre you one who appreciates the finer things in life? ...If the answer to the above is "yes," you have taste. Now ... I am going to urge you to watch the telly....What Chippendale was to furniture ... Henry Louis Aaron is to baseball. He is an unflawed diamond, a steak in a pile of hamburger, an Old Master in a room full of abstract junk.

The Giants were in first place on September 1, half a game ahead of the Dodgers, a game ahead of a surging Cincinnati club, and three up on the Braves, but while the teams staged a raucous pennant chase, the antic.i.p.ated showdown of old lions never quite came to pa.s.s. Henry had held up his end, near the leaders in the usual offensive categories. Meanwhile, for the first time in his career, it was easier to look away from than at Willie Mays. In the final heat of the pennant race, Mays was barely an everyday player. At one stretch between August and September, he had gone 63 at bats without a home run, and for the first time in his career done something he'd never envisioned: He went an entire calendar month-July-without hitting one out of the yard.

Still, the two found a way to create electricity. The Giants and Braves met Wednesday night, September 10, Pat Jarvis against Ron Bryant. The San Francisco team arrived in Atlanta holding a game-and-a-half lead over the Braves but just half a game ahead of the Reds. It was a night of raw nerves, exposed, on both sides of the field. There was the City Too Busy to Hate being exposed as the City Too Busy for a Pennant Race, as only 10,705 showed up to the yard with their first October on the line, exposing Atlanta's indifference to baseball. Willie Mays, a dingy sh.e.l.l of his Broadway star, grounded into a double play in the first, perked up by nailing a runner at the plate from center, and then allowed a cheap run to score on an error during the decisive seventh inning.

Henry continued to watch Willie grow faint in his rearview mirror: a long homer off Bryant in the fourth, plus two additional runs scored in an 84 win. The Braves took first place the next night, when Henry hit his forty-first homer of the year while Mays wore the collar.

Five days later, when the two teams met again on September 15 in San Francisco, Atlanta this time holding a game-and-a-half lead, with fourteen to play, Willie took a few whacks at the rocking chair, driving in half of the Giant runs (including a backbreaking homer) in a 41 win in the opener. Marichal was the story the next night, shutting out the Braves with a four-hitter, but Mays, not quite ready to go away, went two for four and drove in the only run that mattered, and the Braves were back in second place, behind the Giants by half a game.

For the fans who remembered (or cared to remember) the old Milwaukee Braves, the scenario was too familiar: inches from the play-offs, with a dozen games left, about to blow it. Understanding the history, wondering how many different ways the trapdoor could open was not an unkind question, especially because after getting swept by the Giants, the Braves went down the coast to Chavez Ravine, to the Dodgers, Jim Bunning, and Steve Stone. Bunning, fading, couldn't get past the fifth, but the two teams jousted. And then there was Henry, who rapped a couple of hits and a run scored as the rivals slapped each other around into extra innings. Henry led off the top of the twelfth against Ray Lamb and smoked a fastball into the seats for a home run, one made even sweeter in the bottom of the inning when Henry caught the final out, and still sweeter when the team arrived in the visitors' clubhouse, took a look at the fuzzy television in the room, and saw that Larry Dierker had outdueled Henry's favorite, that cheater g.a.y.l.o.r.d Perry, up in San Francisco. Henry had put the Braves back in first.

The Dodgers would win the next night, and then the Braves wound up and delivered the knockout punch: a ten-game winning streak to ice the division t.i.tle on penultimate day of the season. The scheduling G.o.ds were kind: The Dodgers and Giants beat up on each other while the Braves sliced through San Diego (110 losses) and Houston. Henry, who had finished at .300, with one hundred runs scored, forty-four homers, and ninety-seven RBI, was back in the play-offs for the first time in a decade. A year earlier, the Braves would have been packing for the off-season, having won ninety-three games but seven short of the Mets for the pennant. Now, they were in the play-offs, a young, coalescing Mets club awaiting them in the inaugural National League Championship Series.

THE PLAY-OFFS were over in an eyeblink. The Mets, racing toward destiny, finished off the Braves in three straight, but each game showed Henry in his true incandescent light. were over in an eyeblink. The Mets, racing toward destiny, finished off the Braves in three straight, but each game showed Henry in his true incandescent light.

He had never liked New York, and yet he could not escape the big town. The New York Giants beat him in 1954. Brooklyn had kept him from the World Series in 1955 and 1956. He had played in the 1957 and 1958 World Series-both times against the Yankees-and here he was once more, in the postseason in New York, playing against a team that had not existed the last time he'd played October baseball. The first game, played under the pageantry of bunting, the first big-league play-off game ever in the state of Georgia, with 50,522 aroused for baseball, was tense and muscular: Seaver against Niekro, both bound for Cooperstown, Niekro giving up two early runs in the second, the Braves nicking Seaver for three by the end of the third, both teams trading runs, getting the nerves out.

Seventh inning, one out, 44 game: Seaver recalled the sequence. In an earlier at bat, he threw Henry a fastball, outside corner, on which Henry was a couple of days late. In a tie ball game, n.o.body on, Seaver, all of twenty-four years old but winner of a league-best twenty-five games, figured he'd get ahead with the same pitch, which Henry sent sizzling into the left-field seats for a home run, 54 Braves.

Even Henry was no match for destiny. The Mets knocked out Niekro the very next inning with a five spot, and the Braves went quietly the rest of the way. As if discovering the painting on the living room wall was an original Rembrandt, the New York press swarmed Henry.

In the second game, the Mets beat Ron Reed, pinata-style. It was 80 before the Braves batted around the order for the second time. Before the series took on a decidedly lopsided shape, there was Henry. Down 91 in the fifth, Henry banged a three-run homer off Jerry Koosman to offer the crowd of 50,270 a faint breath, but the final score was 116.

The Braves went to Shea Stadium a loss away from death. Gary Gentry took the mound for the Mets, surrounded by pennant-thirsty crazies, pumping him up, readying for the coronation.

And there, once again, was Henry, who took a Gentry fastball four hundred feet for a first-inning two-run homer. Gentry would last but two innings. Up 20, Pat Jarvis couldn't stop the stampede. The Braves lost leads of 20 and 43, succ.u.mbing for the final time of the year, 74. The hero was a twenty-two-year-old right-handed relief pitcher named Nolan Ryan, who mopped up for Gentry by giving up just three hits and striking out seven in seven innings, and it was over.

The kids on the Braves already loved Henry-there was no question about that-but what he did against the Mets elevated him to an even higher plane. Afterward, the press mobbed Henry, as if it were his team going to the World Series instead of home for the winter.

In the three games, he hit .357, homered in each one. He had five hits in fourteen at bats; none were singles. Three home runs and two doubles, and none of his. .h.i.ts were cheapies, either, pile-on jobs that didn't affect the final outcome. Henry had given his team the lead or given them life. And though n.o.body knew it at the time, he did it, essentially, with one hand.

"We were off that night208 after we won the division, and I was with Henry Aaron and Clete Boyer and some of the guys, and it rained," Ralph Garr recalled. "We were in a car and it slipped into a ditch. Henry was pushing the car and cut his hand on the headlight. It wasn't two or three scratches. If you looked at his hand, you would have thought he wouldn't have played in the play-offs. after we won the division, and I was with Henry Aaron and Clete Boyer and some of the guys, and it rained," Ralph Garr recalled. "We were in a car and it slipped into a ditch. Henry was pushing the car and cut his hand on the headlight. It wasn't two or three scratches. If you looked at his hand, you would have thought he wouldn't have played in the play-offs.

"He didn't practice, didn't say too much, and now I'm scared to death. I'm thinking, What is Henry going to tell these people, and his team has got to play the New York Mets? Me and Dusty are talking in the clubhouse when the play-offs started and Henry walks in with Dave Pursley and the team doctor. They go into in the trainer's room, and they shoot Henry in the hand with Novocain, right in between his fingers. He puts on a black glove and hit .360.... After that was over, it brought chills to me. You had to see that, son. You had to see it to see what Henry Aaron did to exemplify what it meant to be a baseball player."

Henry packed his bags for the year and headed to the hospital, having played through gritted teeth all season with a sore back. There would be no World Series, and he would never again play in the postseason. But in the eyes of the country, he had been reanimated, reintroduced as a superstar. He had played brilliantly during the season and was even better in the postseason. In the meantime, a process had begun-not always undertaken with great enthusiasm-the walk toward a new chapter in his life, one that would define him as one thing only. If before the 1969 season he was, in Mickey Mantle's phrase, the "greatest, most underrated player in baseball," he would leave as someone who would never go unnoticed. He had not changed, and yet he had crossed an unofficial threshold: From that day forward, he was no longer Henry Aaron. He was the man chasing Babe Ruth.

THE TABLES TURNED for good right around Thanksgiving 1971, in Mexico City. Near the beach, Willie Mays was enjoying his honeymoon with his second wife, Mae, when he was accosted by an a.s.sociated Press reporter. It was there that Mays conceded what was once the unthinkable: Henry Aaron, and not Willie Mays, would likely pa.s.s Babe Ruth and break the all-time home-run record, sometime in either 1973 or 1974. Over the previous two seasons, the hard truth has permeated the soil that Mays had become a legend in cultivating, and others would recognize it faster than Willie. He was the one who was bigger than life, the product of his transcendent ability and the New York superhero machine. And yet during the winter after the 1971 season, for the first time in a career consistently overshadowed by star players with more charisma, playing with better media, Henry was more famous than even Willie Mays. He had 639 home runs, still seven behind Mays's total of 646, but at this juncture Henry had never been closer to Mays's career total. For the previous three seasons, with Mays in steep, heartbreaking decline, Henry had soared-44 four home runs in 1969, 38 home runs and 118 RBI in 1970, and 47 home runs, more than he'd ever hit in a year in 1971. In the opposing dugout, Mays had grown old and ordinary-as the 1972 season approached, Mays hadn't hit thirty home runs or driven in one hundred runs since 1966, hadn't scored one hundred or hit .300 since 1965. In 1971, he struck out 123 times in only 417 at bats, proof that his eyes and reflexes had weakened to the point where he could no longer make consistent contact. When Willie was Willie, say in 1962, he'd come to bat 621 times and struck out just 85 times. Numbers were meant to be ma.s.saged to political and partisan ends, but here the numbers were forcing Willie to face the larger truth that his run as for good right around Thanksgiving 1971, in Mexico City. Near the beach, Willie Mays was enjoying his honeymoon with his second wife, Mae, when he was accosted by an a.s.sociated Press reporter. It was there that Mays conceded what was once the unthinkable: Henry Aaron, and not Willie Mays, would likely pa.s.s Babe Ruth and break the all-time home-run record, sometime in either 1973 or 1974. Over the previous two seasons, the hard truth has permeated the soil that Mays had become a legend in cultivating, and others would recognize it faster than Willie. He was the one who was bigger than life, the product of his transcendent ability and the New York superhero machine. And yet during the winter after the 1971 season, for the first time in a career consistently overshadowed by star players with more charisma, playing with better media, Henry was more famous than even Willie Mays. He had 639 home runs, still seven behind Mays's total of 646, but at this juncture Henry had never been closer to Mays's career total. For the previous three seasons, with Mays in steep, heartbreaking decline, Henry had soared-44 four home runs in 1969, 38 home runs and 118 RBI in 1970, and 47 home runs, more than he'd ever hit in a year in 1971. In the opposing dugout, Mays had grown old and ordinary-as the 1972 season approached, Mays hadn't hit thirty home runs or driven in one hundred runs since 1966, hadn't scored one hundred or hit .300 since 1965. In 1971, he struck out 123 times in only 417 at bats, proof that his eyes and reflexes had weakened to the point where he could no longer make consistent contact. When Willie was Willie, say in 1962, he'd come to bat 621 times and struck out just 85 times. Numbers were meant to be ma.s.saged to political and partisan ends, but here the numbers were forcing Willie to face the larger truth that his run as the the elite player of his time had come to a close. elite player of his time had come to a close.

There was another number Hank achieved that Willie would not, the number of which everyone in baseball was most aware: In February 1972, Henry Aaron became the highest-paid player in the history of the sport, when Bartholomay signed him to a three-year, $600,000 deal.

This, too, was Willie's territory. Willie Mays had set the standard of salaries (at least for black players) for twenty years. Now Hank was making $200,000, the first $200,000 player ever. Actually, the real number was $165,000, as $45,000 per year was deferred over a ten-year period, semimonthly, beginning immediately after his retirement or on July 1, 1973-whichever came first-but it was still more than Mays, who was earning $150,000.

AARON-600G FOR 3 YEARS209- CALLED "HIGHEST CONTRACT EVER"ATLANTA, FEB. 29 (UPI)-Braves' superstar Hank Aaron, the man with the best chance of breaking Babe Ruth's home run record, became the highest paid player in baseball history today when he signed a contract which will reportedly pay him $600,000 over the next three years.

He was never supposed to be the guy. He didn't hit home runs in the big, bombastic way home-run hitters do. He'd led the league in home runs four times but had never hit fifty in a year, the way Ruth or Foxx or Mantle or Mays had. Even when he hit his career-best forty-seven in 1971, there was always something else a little better going on: Mays and the Giants went to the play-offs, Clemente was great again-.341 batting average, a legendary, victorious performance in the World Series-and Joe Torre hit .363 and won the MVP.

The record was never anything Henry verbalized for print, but at increasing points after 1968, he began to hone in on Ruth, doing so in his patented way: by staring at the number 714 as if through a spygla.s.s, a.s.sessing his usual performance, subtracting for possible injuries and performance decline, but, most of all, determining that the record belonged to him him. Periodically, he would sidle up to Wayne Minshew of the Atlanta Journal-Const.i.tution Atlanta Journal-Const.i.tution and say, "Hey, Wayne, do you think I have a chance at it?" and say, "Hey, Wayne, do you think I have a chance at it?"

"It was Milo Hamilton, the broadcaster,210 who really started doing the math and vocalizing that the record was there for him," Minshew recalled. "And sometimes that created hard feelings. I remember one time Hank and Milo were in a feud and Hank said to me, 'I can break this record if this guy would just leave me alone.'" who really started doing the math and vocalizing that the record was there for him," Minshew recalled. "And sometimes that created hard feelings. I remember one time Hank and Milo were in a feud and Hank said to me, 'I can break this record if this guy would just leave me alone.'"

Along the way, on May 17, 1970, at weathered Crosley Field in Cincinnati, came hit number three thousand, a first-inning single off Wayne Simpson, the first time Henry had beaten Mays to a major milestone-Mays would reach three thousand two months later. Henry had become the first black player to record three thousand hits, the first player in baseball history to reach three thousand hits and and hit five hundred home runs. He had always said he would retire following his three thousandth hit, but by this point his priorities had changed. hit five hundred home runs. He had always said he would retire following his three thousandth hit, but by this point his priorities had changed.

Willie would never surrender the stage easily to the man who had always played in his shadow. In Mexico City that day, Mays told the reporter that, yes, Henry would likely break Ruth's record, but he didn't stop there. Before walking away, he added halfheartedly, "Maybe I will, too."

And for years, that's how it would be. They were not friends, and if Henry'd had his way, they wouldn't have been rivals, either, because Henry truly seemed to admire Willie. The two men lived the American story with more similarities than differences. Both were black children of the Depression-era South, the defining characteristic for each. Both were unparalleled on the baseball diamond. As they aged, the similarities increased. By 1972, both men had been divorced-Barbara filed in 1970, after seventeen years of marriage, citing mental cruelty. Henry did not contest the filing, saying only that they had "grown apart." In the smoldering shadow of Robinson, neither man felt appreciated for his position on civil rights. Neither-because of his financial position and inherent conservatism with regard to power-lent enough personal clout to the elimination of the reserve clause, the rule that kept players bound to their teams for life, kept them from the money that would change the game. When Curt Flood took baseball to court, Aaron and Mays were both curiously silent. Allowing players to become free agents, Henry told the a.s.sociated Press, would be disastrous for baseball. Mays went a step further, criticizing Flood for being ungrateful to the game.

It was true that Henry Aaron was not uninterested in yapping back and forth in the papers and closed up about Mays to avoid the headaches of he-said/she-said journalism, but there was also something about Willie that wouldn't allow a real friendship with Henry. Willie wouldn't, or couldn't, ever give Henry his due as a great player, and that inability on Mays's part to acknowledge Henry as an equal was what really burned Henry.

Periodically, Mays would soften, both men apparently recognizing there was little margin for either in fostering a narrative of the two greatest black players, from the same state, no less, at each other's throats.

"I'll see how it goes,"211 Mays said about pursuing the record along with Henry in February 1972. "But a long time ago I said Hank would pa.s.s me, and if I happened to quit within the next year or so or when he does, I'd be happy to present him with the ball that he hits out of the park." Mays said about pursuing the record along with Henry in February 1972. "But a long time ago I said Hank would pa.s.s me, and if I happened to quit within the next year or so or when he does, I'd be happy to present him with the ball that he hits out of the park."

For years, they had fought for position, but in 1954 and part of 1958 and for the whole pivotal seasons of 1959 and 1969, they fought for pennants, too, their numbers virtually identical, their legacies cemented; they were the difference between New York and London-a can't-miss either way, just depended on one's preference. Over those years, Henry had gone out of his way to praise Mays. During the Fred Haney years, when he grudgingly accepted Haney's decision to play him in center field, Henry would joke about how he would never make an all-star team because he now played the same position as Willie, a self-deprecating comment that underscored Henry's admiration for Mays and his confidence in himself. In interviews, Henry did not miss an opportunity to say Willie was the best player going, and in later years he would acknowledge Mays's contribution in easing the way for black players, first through his barnstorming team in the 1950s and later by becoming the first black team captain in baseball history. Mays was the first black player in the history of major-league baseball to be called the greatest player of all time by the mainstream, and Henry often concurred with the opinion. Around 1971, there was the story circulating around baseball about Tal Smith, then a young executive with the Houston Astros. The tale went that Smith kept two autographed baseb.a.l.l.s at his home, side by side, one signed by Henry Aaron, the other by Willie Mays. One day, Smith's house was burglarized and the thief swiped the Aaron ball, while leaving the Mays ball in its place. Henry handled the story deftly. "All that proves," he said, "is that there's a crook in Houston who can't read."

Willie returned the favor by giving Henry back nothing. When Henry began to soar up the home-run chart, Willie was loath to give even a partial nod to Henry's ability, choosing instead to blame his own performance on his home turf, Candlestick Park, saying it was a lousy park in which to hit homers and that this was the reason for Henry's onrush. The disadvantages of Candlestick were especially obvious in comparison to that bandbox AtlantaFulton County Stadium, famously dubbed "the Launching Pad."

The problem wasn't that Willie was a proud and fiery compet.i.tor, but that he didn't give Henry anything anything, not even an acknowledgment that for the first twelve years of Henry's career, he played in a symmetrical park, County Stadium, whose dimensions did not favor him, while Mays played the early part of his career at the Polo Grounds, where the foul lines did not even measure three hundred feet. Mays's comment on the evening of April 27, 1971, in Atlanta, when Henry hit career blast number six hundred, ironically against San Francisco, was a prime example of this att.i.tude. "Hank might just catch Ruth," Mays said backhandedly after the game. "He's playing in the right parks."

Willie never hit well in Milwaukee, for power or for average. From 1953 until 1965, Mays. .h.i.t in County Stadium as a visiting player in his prime years and tallied a .289 average with thirty home runs in 199 games. Yet in his 2010 authorized biography of Mays, the author James S. Hirsch wrote, "Mays believes he would have hit eight hundred homers if he had not gone into the military and played in parks like Aaron's." That was what burned Henry: Willie couldn't stop slapping him in the face.

Mays did lose two years to the army, and certainly at twenty-one and twenty-two, he would have had a better-than-average opportunity to record the fifty-five home runs he would fall short of to surpa.s.s Ruth. So much of why the relationship between Mays and Aaron was perceived, often rightly, as tense, if not acrimonious, stemmed from their personalities-the self-centered Mays and the diplomatic Aaron.

After years of being asked about his own feats, Mays almost certainly must have resented at some level being asked now more about Henry. Take the end of spring training, when, during an interview session, Henry was asked about his chances to catch Ruth. "I think I can make it if I stay healthy and if I have a strong man batting behind me, so they won't pitch around me."

When the scribes asked Mays the same question, Willie's response said it all: "Well, he has to catch me first."

MAYBE M MAYS DIDN'T mean to sound like a jealous rival. Maybe it was simply Willie's professional nod to the cruelty and unpredictability of the fates, for it was true that to reach the top shelf, everything had to go right: You had to play in the right park at the right time, you had to avoid missing time, and you couldn't get hurt. Ted Williams might have been the one to beat Ruth, had the Splinter not missed nearly five years to war, and played in a park, Fenway Park, where the right-field power alley was a cavernous 380 feet. Williams was generally considered the best hitter who ever lived, but he hadn't reached three thousand hits. Neither, for that matter, had Ruth or Gehrig. Maybe it wasn't jealousy, but it sounded that way. It sounded as though Willie couldn't accept the truth: Mays had the memories and the prose, but statistically, Henry had the numbers. mean to sound like a jealous rival. Maybe it was simply Willie's professional nod to the cruelty and unpredictability of the fates, for it was true that to reach the top shelf, everything had to go right: You had to play in the right park at the right time, you had to avoid missing time, and you couldn't get hurt. Ted Williams might have been the one to beat Ruth, had the Splinter not missed nearly five years to war, and played in a park, Fenway Park, where the right-field power alley was a cavernous 380 feet. Williams was generally considered the best hitter who ever lived, but he hadn't reached three thousand hits. Neither, for that matter, had Ruth or Gehrig. Maybe it wasn't jealousy, but it sounded that way. It sounded as though Willie couldn't accept the truth: Mays had the memories and the prose, but statistically, Henry had the numbers.

And that wasn't all there was. For his generation, Mays exemplified the rare combination of physical, athletic genius and a showman's gift for timing. What went less reported and, as the years pa.s.sed, became an uncomfortable, common lament was just how cruel and self-absorbed Mays could be.

The veracity of one story would never be completely ascertained because Henry would refuse to discuss the details, but Reese Schonfeld never forgot it, and he believes every word of it to be true. Schonfeld would make his career in the television business, becoming a business a.s.sociate of Ted Turner during the early years of the rise of cable television.

But in the summer of 1957, Schonfeld was just a kid, twenty-five years old, in Boston, excited to be sent to the Polo Grounds to interview the hottest player on the hottest team in baseball, Henry Aaron, and getting paid fifty dollars for the a.s.signment.

"It's July 1957,212 I'm working for United Press/Movietone news, and I'm up at the Polo Grounds, on a.s.signment from WBZ Boston to interview Milwaukee Braves manager, Fred Haney, left-hander Warren Spahn, and the new phenom, Hank Aaron. WBZ wanted the interviews to promote the upcoming Jimmy Fund baseball game between the Braves and the Red Sox. The Jimmy Fund had been created by the Braves when they were still the Boston Braves, and they returned to Boston every year to help raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Inst.i.tute in the name of 'Jimmy,' a pseudonym for a twelve-year old boy who was a patient there. It was Aaron's first appearance in the game, and his potential for greatness was apparent to all. The Boston fans wanted to see him in action. I'm working for United Press/Movietone news, and I'm up at the Polo Grounds, on a.s.signment from WBZ Boston to interview Milwaukee Braves manager, Fred Haney, left-hander Warren Spahn, and the new phenom, Hank Aaron. WBZ wanted the interviews to promote the upcoming Jimmy Fund baseball game between the Braves and the Red Sox. The Jimmy Fund had been created by the Braves when they were still the Boston Braves, and they returned to Boston every year to help raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Inst.i.tute in the name of 'Jimmy,' a pseudonym for a twelve-year old boy who was a patient there. It was Aaron's first appearance in the game, and his potential for greatness was apparent to all. The Boston fans wanted to see him in action.

"The Braves were playing the Giants in a twi-night double-header. We arrived about five p.m., set up our camera in foul territory, just off third base. Haney emerged from the dugout, did the interview, plugged the Jimmy Fund, and then sent out Warren Spahn. Spahn told us how much he missed the fans in Boston and looked forward to seeing them shortly. All good PR. Then out came Aaron. Aaron was different. The Boston fans had never seen Aaron. WBZ had asked me to talk to him about baseball, particularly about his wrists, supposed to be 'the quickest wrists in all of baseball.'

"As we changed film for the new interview, Willie Mays came trotting in from center field, where he had been s.h.a.gging flies, and knelt just on the fair side of the foul line. Dusk was falling, we had no electrician, and I had to finish the interview before the light faded entirely.

As we focused on Aaron, the cameraman measuring the distance between the lens and his subject, Mays started ragging on Aaron: 'How much they paying you, Hank? They ain't payin' you at all, Hank? Don't you know we all get paid for this? You ruin it for the rest of us, Hank! You just fall off the turnip truck?'

"Aaron is getting more and more agitated. Fred Haney trots out and explains to Aaron: 'It's the Jimmy Fund-it's charity. It's okay.' We begin the interview then to get a better shot of his wrists; we move the tripod. Now Mays lays it on thick: 'You showin' 'em how you swing? We get paid three to four hundred dollars for this. You one dumb n.i.g.g.e.r!' And he laughs. Finally we were done. Aaron shakes his head, I thank him, but half angry, half bewildered, he spits at my feet.

"When he gets back in the dugout, Haney tries to calm him down. It doesn't work. Mays has gotten into Aaron's head. Haney recognizes it and takes Hank out of the lineup. He plays not at all in the first game; in the second game he pinch-hits and walks. Willie had hara.s.sed Hank right out of the batting order. The New York Times New York Times cites the Mays-Aaron 'years of friendship.' I wouldn't bet on it." cites the Mays-Aaron 'years of friendship.' I wouldn't bet on it."

If the idea that Henry Aaron, leading candidate for National League Most Valuable Player and one of the toughest, most focused clutch players in the history of the game, could be psyched out of the lineup by pregame chatter, even from Willie Mays, sounded apocryphal, it was. On July 21, 1957, just as Schonfeld recalled, the Giants and Braves did play a twi-night doubleheader at the Polo Grounds. In the first game, the Braves behind Spahn held a 43 lead into the bottom of the ninth, but the Giants rallied for two runs off Don McMahon and won, 54. Mays went one for three with a double and a run scored. Schonfeld's memory fails him in that Henry did did play in the first game, walking as a pinch hitter in the eighth. d.i.c.k Cole pinchran for Henry. play in the first game, walking as a pinch hitter in the eighth. d.i.c.k Cole pinchran for Henry.

Henry did not play in the nightcap, a 74 Braves win, but it seems apparent that his absence had nothing to do with Mays. Four days earlier, in a 62 win in Philadelphia, Henry went on a rampage, a perfect day: three for three with a mammoth home run off Harvey Haddix, two batted in and two walks, one intentional. In that game, he injured his ankle. He missed the next three games and wouldn't start again until July 23 in Milwaukee against the Phillies. The ankle injury, and not Mays's banter, is the more likely explanation for why Haney would scratch Henry before a doubleheader in the middle of a pennant race. It also explained why Henry, second only to Bruton as the fastest man on the Braves, would be removed for a pinch runner in a tight ball game. Clearly, he had attempted to return to the lineup too early and couldn't run.

Nevertheless, the important kernel in Schonfeld's recollections is how Mays apparently treated Henry that day, and Henry's reaction for the next fifty years-to diffuse, while not forgetting, the original offense-would be consistent with the shrewd but stern way Henry Aaron dealt with uncomfortable issues. The world did not need to know Henry's feelings toward Mays, but Henry was not fooled by his adversary. Mays committed one of the great offenses against a person as proud as Henry: He insulted him, embarra.s.sed him in front of other people, and did not treat him with respect. Such an exchange was not the kind Henry would be likely to forget. As they say in the news business, Schonfeld stuck by his story.

"I was just a kid, and it was exciting to me213 to be there. It was pregame. There was n.o.body in the stands. I wanted to interview Warren Spahn, and I remember them playing a joke on me, because I was a rookie, too. They sent Burdette out. Luckily, I knew what Spahn looked like," he said. "You could see Hank was getting really worked up through the interview, and I thought we did a really good piece. I don't think he spit at me, but it was at my feet, like something left a bad taste in his mouth. to be there. It was pregame. There was n.o.body in the stands. I wanted to interview Warren Spahn, and I remember them playing a joke on me, because I was a rookie, too. They sent Burdette out. Luckily, I knew what Spahn looked like," he said. "You could see Hank was getting really worked up through the interview, and I thought we did a really good piece. I don't think he spit at me, but it was at my feet, like something left a bad taste in his mouth.

"Willie was calling him 'farm boy' and saying stuff like 'You're in the major leagues now.' I specifically remember Willie using the word n.i.g.g.e.r n.i.g.g.e.r, but I didn't think a lot about it, because that was how a lot of blacks talked to each other. I always thought it was bench jockeying, or maybe Willie just didn't like to see the next guy coming up being just as good as he was."

BY THE EARLY months of 1972, time was breaking Henry, too. He reported to West Palm Beach in February and headed straight to the trainer's room. His ankles hurt, and so did his right knee, injured in a home-plate collision during spring training, and his back had hurt for nearly three years. And that was how in 1972 Henry would play 105 games at first base, both to ease his physical trouble and, mostly, to replace an injured Orlando Cepeda, as well as Rico Carty, who had shattered his leg. months of 1972, time was breaking Henry, too. He reported to West Palm Beach in February and headed straight to the trainer's room. His ankles hurt, and so did his right knee, injured in a home-plate collision during spring training, and his back had hurt for nearly three years. And that was how in 1972 Henry would play 105 games at first base, both to ease his physical trouble and, mostly, to replace an injured Orlando Cepeda, as well as Rico Carty, who had shattered his leg.

On the good days, Henry would tell the writers during spring training that he felt like he was a kid again. "I feel like I'm eighteen again," Henry said. On the bad days, when his right knee would buckle and bite, he explained he had not elected to have off-season surgery because of his age. And there was the matter of his arthritic neck, which seemed to flare up with regularity.

The season did not start on time-the first-ever players strike made sure of that-and when it did, Henry victimized the Reds (first Don Gullett, then Jack Billingham) and then the Cardinals (Bob Gibson, then Rick Wise) during a four-day stretch in April at AtlantaFulton County Stadium.

Ten days later, on May 5, he returned the favor in St. Louis with a two-run shot off Gibson. The next day, May 6, 1972-also known as the forty-first birthday of Mr. Willie Howard Mays, Jr.-Henry caught Wise again, for career home run number 645. Willie, meanwhile, hadn't yet hit his first of the season. Henry was one behind Mays. Nineteen games into the season, hitting .184, with no bombs and three RBI, on May 11, the spiral was complete: The Giants traded Mays to the New York Mets for pitcher Charlie Williams (who would produce an 8.68 ERA for his new team) and fifty thousand dollars in cash.

The showman was back on Broadway, in his town, and Mays provided a nostalgia burst. May 14, in his first game as a Met (against the Giants, of course), Mays walked and scored in the first, then broke a 44 tie in the bottom of the fifth with a home run that stood as the game winner, 54 Mets. At Veterans Stadium in Philly a week later, May 21, Mays shook that year-old concrete bowl. This was a Phillies team that would win just fifty-nine games fifty-nine games all season, and yet on this night they weren't pushovers, because of Steve Carlton, who would win twenty-seven games all by himself. The Phillies led 30 in the sixth with Carlton, on the hill when Willie led off with a double and scored on Tommy Agee's home run. On his next at bat, with one on in the eighth and the Phils up 32, Mays broke Carlton's heart with a two-run homer, for a 43 Mets win. The leader was all season, and yet on this night they weren't pushovers, because of Steve Carlton, who would win twenty-seven games all by himself. The Phillies led 30 in the sixth with Carlton, on the hill when Willie led off with a double and scored on Tommy Agee's home run. On his next at bat, with one on in the eighth and the Phils up 32, Mays broke Carlton's heart with a two-run homer, for a 43 Mets win. The leader was back back.

Willie would be respectable for the rest of the year, hitting .267, but alas, that was it for the heroics. On May 31, at AtlantaFulton County Stadium, Henry Aaron caught Willie Mays with home run number 648, a first-inning drive off San Diego's Fred Norman that snaked around the left-field foul pole.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT:214.

AARON TIES MAYS FOR 2D PLACEIt took Hank Aaron 18-plus seasons to catch Willie Mays. His next target is Babe Ruth's record.Aaron hit his 648th home run Wednesday night....Aaron also became the second player in history to attain 6,000 total bases, reaching 6,001. The record of 6,134 belongs to Stan Musial....

Ten days later, also at the Vet, Henry pa.s.sed Mays with a little sizzle of his own: a grand slam against hulking six-foot-six-inch, 215-pound Wayne Twitch.e.l.l.

Henry would never look back. He would never chase Willie Mays again as much as he would stalk the record book, pa.s.sing whoever was next on the page. For the first time in his career, that next person was not Willie Mays.