Hank Aarons pursuit of Babe Ruth came up one homer short in 1973

The lasting image of Hank Aaron’s home run chase came early in the 1974 season, when he passed Babe Ruth’s record of 714 and took one of the most memorable jogs around the bases in baseball history. But the bulk of Aaron’s pursuit of MLB’s iconic record actually took place the year before, culminating with a season finale 50 years ago Saturday.

Aaron entered that game needing just one home run to tie Ruth’s record, with an outside chance to put the entire effort behind him entering the offseason. Aaron would have a good day at the plate — singling three times in four at-bats — but the historic home run escaped him, meaning he’d have to wait six months for another crack.

“I feel relieved it’s over for a while,” he told reporters after the game. “Now, I just want to get lost for a few days, go fishing or something and forget about baseball and the chase.”

Aaron, 39, had reason to want a break. On the field, the Atlanta Braves slugger had a terrific season — hitting 40 home runs with a .301 batting average. But it had been a trying season off the field, with Aaron getting racist letters, some threatening his life, if he dared to break Ruth’s iconic record.

After his final game of 1973, Aaron appeared to downplay that ugly side of the season.

“I should hope that with this chase of Babe Ruth’s record, it’s brought out some new fans. To back up a little bit, earlier this season, some people in the older generation had the idea that they didn’t want me to break it,” he said. “But in other letters, people in the younger generation want me to do something they can relate to, instead of what their granddaddies talked about 30, 40 years ago.”

Aaron acknowledged receiving some death threats, but added, “I can't go into hibernation now. I can't hide. I've said that all I have to do to break Babe Ruth's record is to stay alive, but I got to live my life.”

Two decades later, however, he was much blunter about the toll the abuse took on him and his family.

“My kids had to live like they were in prison because of kidnap threats, and I had to live like a pig in a slaughter camp,” he told New York Times sports columnist William C. Rhoden in 1994. “I had to duck. I had to go out the back door of the ballparks. I had to have a police escort with me all the time. I was getting threatening letters every single day. All of these things have put a bad taste in my mouth, and it won’t go away. They carved a piece of my heart away.”

In his 1991 autobiography, “I Had a Hammer,” Aaron wrote, “The Ruth chase should have been the greatest period of my life, and it was the worst. I couldn’t believe there was so much hatred in people. It’s something I’m still trying to get over, and maybe I never will.” (Aaron died in 2021.)

Aaron’s historic chase took place during a remarkable baseball season. The American League added the designated hitter in 1973, and 42-year-old Willie Mays played his final season, hitting just .211. The New York Mets, who were in last place in the National League East on Aug. 30, came back to win the division title, then stunned the Cincinnati Reds in the Championship Series to win the pennant. Outside of sports, the nation was transfixed by the Watergate scandal, and Americans were reeling from the energy crisis. Aaron’s pursuit landed in the middle of all those blaring headlines.

‘The disgrace of baseball’

As a boy growing up in Mobile, Ala, Aaron said years later, his mother would “[call] us in at 4:30, 5 o'clock, telling us, 'Get under the bed!' because the Ku Klux Klan was marching through.”

In 1953, he was one of the first Black men to play in the Sally League, for the Milwaukee Braves’ minor league team in Jacksonville, Fla., where he couldn’t stay at hotels with his White teammates. At southern stadiums throughout the league, he received a barrage of taunts from White fans.

It was no wonder, then, that when the Braves announced they were moving to Atlanta for the 1966 season, Aaron was worried.

“I have lived in the South, and I don’t want to live there again,” he said. “We can go anywhere in Milwaukee. I don’t know what would happen in Atlanta.”

Seven years later, as he pursued Ruth’s record, the Braves had two off-duty police officers in the stands near Aaron’s spot in the outfield.

“I didn’t expect the fans to give me a standing ovation every time I stepped on the field, but I thought a few of them might come over to my side as I approached Ruth,” Aaron wrote in his autobiography. “At the very least, I felt I had earned the right not to be verbally abused and racially ravaged in my home ballpark.”

As he closed in on the record in the final week of the ’73 season, crowds were sparse at Atlanta Stadium. In the fourth-to-last game of the season, just 10,211 came to see the fifth-place Braves host the second-place Los Angeles Dodgers. The next night, barely half of that — 5,571 — showed up.

“Whatever the reason, the panorama of Atlanta Stadium is dominated by empty blue seats as Henry Aaron approaches Babe Ruth's record of 714 home runs,” Dave Anderson wrote in a Sept. 28 New York Times column. He noted that bigger crowds were expected for the weekend finale.

“But until more people appear, Atlanta is the disgrace of baseball,” Anderson wrote. “It prides itself as a historical city, but it's ignoring history. Atlanta doesn't deserve Henry Aaron's drama. He'd be better off on a barnstorming tour.”

In the Braves’ next game, the second-to-last one of the season, a crowd of 17,836 saw Aaron hit his 713th homer against the Houston Astros on a Saturday night. With the record in reach, the fans finally showed up in force for the Sunday finale, which drew 40,517 people.

‘One good pitch’

Batting cleanup for the Braves, Aaron hit an RBI single in the bottom of the first inning, after passing up on a juicy fastball earlier in the at-bat.

“I only got one good pitch all day,” Aaron said after the game. “The first pitch the first time up, he threw a fastball right down the middle. I took it. And it was the last one I saw down the middle.”

Before the game, Astros reliever Don Wilson told his teammates he was going to catch Aaron’s 714th home run, and he parked himself in the grassy area behind the center field fence. Houston’s starting pitcher, Dave Roberts, laughed and waved Wilson back to the bullpen. As fate would have it, Wilson relieved Roberts in the seventh inning and faced Aaron in his final chance at tying the record in the eighth. But Aaron popped out to second base.

When he jogged out to left field after the inning, he was greeted with a three-minute standing ovation from the fans. “That ovation was tremendous,” Aaron said after the game.

Although he came up short of the record, Aaron ended the season going 6 for 7 in his final two games, raising his batting average 10 points to clear .300. The focus on Aaron’s chase of baseball’s most famous career record obscured what an incredible season he had that year. At the age of 39, he hit 40 home runs in just 120 games, slugging .643 — the second-best mark of his career, and just three points below the NL leader, Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Aaron also posted an excellent .402 on-base percentage.

714 and 715

In the offseason, Aaron signed a five-year, $1 million deal with TV manufacturer Magnavox, as fans anticipated his breaking Ruth’s record the next year. He also came in second place in the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year poll, behind Buffalo Bills running back O.J. Simpson.

But the start of Aaron’s 1974 season was clouded by controversy, when the Braves said they would keep him out of an opening three-game series in Cincinnati so he could break the record in Atlanta.

Commissioner Bowie Kuhn recalled in his autobiography, “Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner,” that he urged Braves owner Bill Bartholomay to play Aaron in Cincinnati, hoping Bartholomay would agree to do so without any coercion. When the owner refused to budge, Kuhn said he made it clear “I would write Aaron into the lineup myself if he left me no alternative.” Kuhn followed that up with a letter threatening penalties if the Braves kept Aaron out of the opening series, citing the integrity of the game.

The Braves relented, and Aaron, now 40, belted his 714th homer in his first at-bat of the season, a three-run shot that traveled 400 feet over the left-center field wall at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium. Kuhn and Vice President Gerald Ford — who would become president just four months later following Richard M. Nixon’s resignation — came on the field to commemorate the record-tying homer.

“Good luck for 715 and a good many more,” said Ford, a former college football star.

The Braves came home to Atlanta on Monday, April 8, with Aaron still tied with Ruth. In the fourth inning of their home opener, Aaron hit the record-breaking home run off Dodgers pitcher Al Downing, over the left field fence and into the Braves bullpen. As he circled the bases, a couple of Dodgers infielders congratulated him, as did a pair of 17-year-old fans who jumped the fence and patted the slugger on the chest and shoulder. Fireworks exploded in the ballpark, kicking off an 11-minute celebration.

Vin Scully, calling the game in the visiting radio booth for the Dodgers, made his now famous historical observation:

What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us and particularly for Henry Aaron.

— Vin Scully

Scully also described how Aaron’s mother, Estella, had greeted him with a warm embrace. But it turned out there was more to the hug than celebration: “If they were going to kill my son, they were going to have to kill me, too,” she said later, according to the Times.

Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter, the future president, was on the field to congratulate Aaron, and Nixon called the stadium and connected with Aaron by phone in the Braves dugout. But there was a notable no-show that night: Kuhn. The baseball commissioner instead sent Monte Irvin, the former Negro League and New York Giants star, to represent his office. Kuhn had another engagement that day — speaking to the Indians “Wahoo Club,” a booster organization, in Cleveland. Aaron was miffed by the commissioner’s absence.

Irvin presented Aaron a watch on the field, but when Irvin mentioned the commissioner, the boos rained down from the fans.

“I was smiling because of the boos he was receiving,” Aaron said later.

In his autobiography, Kuhn discussed the controversy in a chapter titled, “While Addressing the Wahoo Club …” He seemed to have some second thoughts about how he handled it. “Was it a wise public relations move?” he asked. “Probably not, although I can assure you I had all the votes in Cleveland that night … Having seen Aaron hit Number 714, I felt no obligation to follow him day by day until Number 715 came along. Who could predict when that would be?”

As for Aaron? He hinted at the darker side of the pursuit when he addressed the crowd that night: “I just thank God it’s all over,” he said.

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