The Hammer

 One by one they leave us now, having lived their full measure for the most part. Tom Terrific and Tommy Dodger and Gibby and Lou.  Al Kaline, the Lord of Tiger Stadium. Don Sutton just a few days ago.

It's as if some great celestial Mom is throwing out our baseball cards, one by one by one. As if the childhoods of those of us of a certain age are being erased  -- because none of this lasts forever, and that includes childhood and the icons of childhood.

And now?

Now Henry Aaron, the most iconic of them all.

He passed Friday morning at 86, having lived his full measure, too. And what you can say about him is that Jackie Robinson opened Major League Baseball's door, but it was men like Henry Aaron who kept it open by walking through it -- and did it at a time when that simple act was fraught with peril.

And so today I'll remember the 755 home runs, and the April  night in Atlanta when he launched 715 into the Braves' bullpen to pass the Babe. But I'll also remember the stacks of mail he got on the way there, too much of it laced with death threats and racist poison. 

I'll remember how Henry Aaron endured this astonishing outpouring of hatred with dignity, but also how he kept boxes of those poisonous letters to remind him that in America a black man can never let down his guard. To remind him that walking through Jackie's door could get a man killed, and the moment you forget that could be your last moment.

In America, see, we can achieve great things, just like the Hammer did, but we can also be astonishingly ugly to one another. It's a country of both high-minded ideals and low-rent violence. The latter both casts a shadow on, and illuminates the  striving for, the former.

So, yes, I'll remember that high-octane swing and the way baseballs disappeared into the sky off the Hammer's bat. But I'll also remember that during his chase of the Babe, low-rent humans threatened to kidnap his daughter. I'll remember that Aaron had an armed bodyguard and checked into hotels under an assumed name as he crept closer to the record. I'll remember him hammering 715, and how when he reached his homeplate his mother enveloped him in a smothering hug.

Not as a spontaneous act, she said later. Because she was trying to shield him from whatever low-rent human might have been peering at him through a gunsight.

I'll remember that. And I'll remember the character it took to withstand it. 

I'll remember the time the young Henry Aaron was playing minor-league ball in the deep South, and some redneck pointed a shotgun in his face and said he'd shoot him if he dared play that night.

Henry Aaron played anyway.