How I broke Babe Ruth's home run record. Baseball star reveals untold story of how he triumphed over racism and the odds - excerpt from I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story

Ebony, July, 1991 by Hank Aaron

THERE were a few things, if only a very few, that Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth had in common. . . . They both left high school early to embark on their careers, although Ruth went into organized ball and Aaron the Negro League. And as they tried to make their ways in the game, both players were referred to publicly and frequently as "nigger," although Aaron was black and Ruth wouldn't have been allowed to play big-league ball if he had been. Ruth did, however, sport certain facial features that some regarded as Negroid, and when some bold antagonist such as an opposing player would speak up with this observation, as many did, the Babe would fly into a rage . . . On a personal level, they were as different as their batting styles. Aaron was a man who ate in his room and called home every night, Ruth a social glutton who held curfew in contempt and wore out waiters' shoes. Ruth told dirty jokes to the social matrons of New York; Aaron was uncomfortable hearing them from his closest teammates.

Aaron was the survivor of that competition. . . . And it angered him that he could not go about his private quest without being compared, criticized, cross-examined, and cussed out in the context of a broad-nosed white man he cared little about.

I WENT into the [1973] season wanting to break the record that summer. . . . Only two things could keep me from breaking the record--a serious injury or a terrible batting average . . . So, as far as I was concerned, everything was fine and dandy as long as I stayed healthy and the base hits fell in.

Not everybody shared that opinion, however.

Dear Nigger,

Everybody loved Babe Ruth. You will be the most hated man in this country if you break his career home run record . . . .

Dear Black Boy,

Listen Black Boy, We don't want no nigger Babe Ruth.

Dirty old nigger man,

Had Ruth played and been at bat as many times as you, old nigger, he would have hit just short of 1100 home runs. I hope lightning strikes you for trying to blemish Ruth's record. . . .

As the hate mail piled up, I became more and more intent on breaking the record and shoving it in the ugly faces of those bigots. I'm sure it made me a better hitter. But it also made my life very, very difficult. A lot of the letters threatened me, and it got to the point that the FBI was reading and confiscating some of my mail before I ever saw it. My secretary, Carla Koplin, was going through almost 3,000 letters a day at one point. Most of the mail was supportive, and the encouraging words people wrote helped me fight through the hate.

But the danger was real enough that the Braves and the city of Atlanta arranged to have a policeman named Calvin Wardlaw escort me to and from the ballpark and make sure I was tucked in at night. I saw as much of Calvin that year as [my wife] Billye or [Eddie] Mathews or anybody. Whenever we were together, he carried a binoculars case with his badge and a pistol inside. He never had to reach for the pistol, but I felt better having him around. . . . Calvin and I almost never made eye contact when we spoke to each other in public, because I was always looking over his shoulder and he was always looking over mine. To this day, I'm still that way.

Dear Hank Aaron,

Retire or die! The Atlanta Braves will be moving around the country and I'll move with them. You'll be in Montreal June 5-7. Will you die there? You'll be in Shea Stadium July 6-8, and in Philly July 9th to 11th. Then again you'll be in Montreal and St. Louis in August. You will die in one of those games. I'll shoot you in one of them. Will I sneak a rifle into the upper deck or a .45 in the bleachers? I don't know yet. But you know you will die unless you retire!

Dear Hank Aaron,

I got orders to do a bad job on you if and when you get 10 from B. Ruth record. A guy in Atlanta and a few in Miami Fla. don't seem to care if they have to take care of your family too.

All that hatred left a deep scar on me. I was just a man doing something that God had given me the power to do, and I was living like an outcast in my own country. I had nowhere to go except home and to the ballpark, home and to the ballpark. I was a prisoner in my own apartment. . . . That whole period, I lived like a guy in a fishbowl, swimming from side to side with nowhere to go, watching everybody watching me. I resented it, and I still resent it. It should have been the most enjoyable time in my life, and instead it was hell. I'm proud of the home run record, but I don't talk about it because it brings back too many unpleasant memories.

It was in Philadelphia in May that I finally mentioned to some sportswriters about the hate mail. One of them made a note of it at the bottom of a baseball story, but then the story was picked up in Atlanta and New York and the whole thing broke open.

The overwhelming majority of letters were supportive after the news of the hate mail got out, but to the bigots it was just another reason to rip me apart. If there was a recurring theme to the negative mail--other than the fact that I was just a nigger--it was the tired old argument that I was no Babe Ruth. The same points were brought up over and over and over--that I had batted so many more times than Ruth, that I played with a livelier ball, that Ruth had been a pitcher for part of his career, that pitchers were better in Ruth's time, that travel was tougher in Ruth's time, that Ruth had a higher batting average than me. I heard them all, and I respected them all; and I thought that none of them made a damn bit of difference because Babe Ruth was Babe Ruth and I was just a man trying to do my job. . . .