50th anniversary of Hank Aaron's 715th home run: His closest friends remember the HR king

They kept moving closer and closer to Hank Aaron on Atlanta’s bench, and he kept moving further and further away to protect them.

They kept looking for a stranger wearing a red jacket, Aaron kept staring at the pitcher.

Their minds kept wandering, sometimes in dark places; Aaron kept his sole concentration on the game.

It was a time the entire nation should have been showering Aaron with praise and glory. Instead, it was a time when part of the nation was showering Aaron with racism, hatred and death threats.

“We were scared to death,” Dusty Baker, Aaron’s close friend and teammate, tells USA TODAY Sports. “We didn’t know what was going to happen.”

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It was 50 years ago today, April 8, 1974. It was the moment that became instantly entrenched in American history.

It was the night Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, sending Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing’s fastball over the left-center field fence for No. 715 of his career.

“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.”

While legendary broadcaster Vin Scully magnificently described the moment, as the record crowd of 55,775 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium screamed in delight, Baker and Ralph Garr, Aaron’s closest friends and teammates, simply exhaled.

All the hatred, the death threats, that terrifying letter saying the killer would be wearing a red coat that evening when he pulled the trigger, could not stop the great Henry Aaron.

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“We were scared to death,” Baker says. “Me and Ralph couldn’t even watch the game. We kept looking for the guy in the red coat the whole game. Hank acted like it didn’t bother him. But I know there was pain. A lot of pain.”

It was such a horrifying ordeal that when USA TODAY Sports sat down with Aaron on the eve of the 40th anniversary, the memories were still too vivid to appreciate the historic feat.

“I was being thrown to the wolves,” he said. “Even though I did something great, nobody wanted to be a part of it. I was so isolated. I couldn’t share it. For many years, even after Jackie Robinson, baseball was so segregated, really. You just didn’t expect us to have a chance to do anything. Baseball was meant for the lily white.

“Now, here’s a record that nobody thought would be broken, and, all of a sudden, who breaks it but a Black person.”

Aaron broke the most sacred record in all of sports at 9:07 p.m. ET, driving a 1-0 fastball over the outstretched glove of Bill Buckner, landing in Atlanta reliever Tom House’s glove in the bullpen.

“It was the greatest moment of my lifetime,” Ralph Garr told USA TODAY Sports. “I don’t care if you’re talking about the first time a man walked on the moon, or anything that ever happened in this country. It was one of the greatest feats on earth. Nothing will ever top the night Hank broke the record.

“Hank and Babe Ruth together in baseball history. What a blessing it was to witness it.”

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Billye Aaron, Hank Aaron’s widow, hosted a dinner at her home Sunday night for Baker, Garr and Aaron’s former friends and teammates.

On Monday, they will gather to celebrate Aaron’s historic moment and life throughout the day in Atlanta. 

There will be a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the morning for the More than Brave: Life of Henry Aaron Exhibit at the Atlanta History Center. There will be a Henry Louis Aaron Fund 715 celebration luncheon featuring a panel with Ambassador Andrew Young, Baker, Garr and House. And there will be a poignant pre game ceremony before Atlanta’s game against the New York Mets featuring Aaron’s family, local dignitaries, Hall of Famers and Commissioner Rob Manfred.

It will be a time to remember, reflect and celebrate not just the night of 715, but the glorious legacy Aaron left behind for generations still reaping the benefits.

“He was such a marvelous human being,” says Garr, Aaron’s former roommate. “As great a ballplayer Hank was, Lord, he was even a better person. You couldn’t have a better human being than Hank. He led by example and treated everyone with the same respect. Black, white, young, old, everyone. He helped everyone.

“Look at me. He and Paul Snyder gave me a job working for the Braves some 40 years ago, and I’m still working for them. So, even though he’s gone, he’s still taking care of me right now.”

Garr, 78, Baker, 74, and Aaron, who died in 2021 at 86, were inseparable as teammates. Aaron would regularly have them over to his home for dinner. He would have them in his hotel room after games on the road to talk about baseball and life. He would bring them to Civil Rights meetings, introducing them to Ralph Abernathy to Jesse Jackson to Young to Maynard Jackson.

“He was the most instrumental influence in my life, outside of my father,” Baker said. “He introduced me and Ralph to everybody. We’d meet everyone in the Black music scene in Atlanta and Memphis. Al Green. Gladys Knight. Rufus Thomas and Carla Thomas. Isaac Hayes. Archie Bell and the Drells. Little Johnny Taylor. You name it, we saw them all.

“And we’d go to meetings with the civic leaders. Hank would always try to protect me and Ralph from being too much on the scene because that scene wasn’t popular with parts of America. So, he would always guard us.”

It was the same with all the hatred and racist mail Aaron received leading to his march toward Ruth’s record. Every day that he moved closer to hitting his 715th homer, his mailbox was stuffed with vile, racist letters. There were death threats on his life. Kidnapping threats on his daughters.

He was assigned a security guard, Calvin Wardlaw, an Atlanta police officer. His name was registered under one room, and he’d check into another. He was on a different floor, sometimes even a completely different hotel than his teammates, listed under an alias, A. Diefendorfer.

“He would never tell us what he was going through,” Garr says. “He kept it all inside. He didn’t drop any of it on us. He didn’t want to be a distraction. He didn’t want to worry us at all. You never would have known he was even going to break Babe Ruth’s record.”

Aaron, so protective of his teammates, didn’t even let anyone in on the late-night accident that could have created an absolute firestorm in the 1969 playoffs.

Atlanta just clinched the National League West title at the end of the season when a few players decided to go out and celebrate before they were scheduled to face the New York Mets in the NL Championship Series. The next thing they knew, third baseman Clete Boyer temporarily lost control of his car in the rain and they wound up in a ditch. Everyone got out and started to push.

Aaron, standing behind the car, pushed so hard that his right hand broke through the car taillight, slicing his hand and fingers.

“We couldn’t believe it,” Garr said. “It cut his hand up, bad, really bad. We said, ‘Oh, man, what are you going to do Hank? What are you doing to do?’ He said, ‘Man, I’ll be all right.’ I was scared to death. We needed him.

“He didn’t practice the next day, but then came in and had three cold shots of novocaine in between all of his finger. He threw on a black batting glove and went to play.”

It might have been the first time Aaron ever wore batting gloves in his career, but he needed protection to keep the stitches from ripping out of his hand.

The Mets wound up sweeping Atlanta in the inaugural best-of-five NLCS, but Aaron was unreal, hitting .357 with three homers and two doubles without striking out once. He drove in seven of Atlanta’s 15 runs.

“Man, no other human being on earth could have done what Hank did that series,” Garr said. “That was just amazing.”

It took 55 years for the secret to be revealed, but this was vintage Aaron, protecting and helping his teammates under every possible circumstance.

He treated Baker and Garr like his sons, actually filling out room service order forms and hanging them on Baker’s hotel door, making sure he got up in time for breakfast, stressing the importance of eating properly.

“He got on me all of the time for getting up and having breakfast,” Baker says. “He was big on eating at a regular time. He was on nutrition and taking care of yourself far ahead of anyone I knew.

“I’d hang out at night, and want to sleep to noon, and there’s a knock on my door at 9 in the morning, and it would be room service. I’d get upset. But that was Hank. He was making his point to get up and have breakfast.”

Aaron even insisted that Baker and Garr sat beside him on team planes to make sure they behaved themselves, and got their rest on planes, instead of going to the back of the plane and hanging out with teammates or joining card games.

“He’d go to sleep and me and Ralph would try to sneak out and go to the back with the fellas,” Baker said. “He would grab our wrists, and say, ‘Sit down.’ We certainly did.

“I tried to never disappoint him. There’s a couple of times where my actions disappointed him, and I felt so bad. If he asked me a question, I would never lie to him. If he didn’t like it, he wouldn’t get on me, he’d just not say anything. That made you feel worse.”

Yet, no one would be happier than Aaron when he watched the accomplishments of the two players he regarded as sons. While 1974 will forever be remembered as the year when Aaron broke the home run record, Aaron was more thrilled for Garr when he hit .353 to win the NL batting title. When Baker congratulated Aaron for being elected into the Hall of Fame in 1982, Aaron was still lauding Baker for winning the 1981 World Series championship with the Dodgers.

“He told me how happy he was that I won a World Series,” Baker said, “and told me that one day I was going to win a World Series as manager, too.”

Forty years later, Baker managed the Houston Astros to the World Series championship, with Garr cheering from the stands and Billye Aaron congratulating Baker from Atlanta, saying how proud Aaron would be. 

“That was the way Hank was,” Garr said. “He was overjoyed when someone accomplished some feat just out of the respect he had for the game of baseball.

“It was no different than how he felt for Barry Bonds when he broke the record, too. You never heard Hank complain about Barry Bonds or nothing. He broke the record. He respected him as the home run king.

“But what Hank and Babe Ruth did, man, that was off the chains what they did for the game of baseball.

“Really, what they meant for America.”

A half-century later, everyone can sit back, reflect and truly celebrate one of the greatest feats in not only sports, but all of American history.

“It feels like yesterday, but the one thing you know about time is that it doesn’t stop for anybody,” Baker says. “It lets you know how quickly and temporary this life is when 50 years can come and go this quickly.

“Fifty years seems like an eternity when you’re young, but now that I’m 74, I look back, and it’s just a short time in history.”

April 8, 1974.

A moment that will be forever entrenched, particularly those who lived it.

“Hank Aaron left a legacy not only for minorities, but for everybody,” Garr says. “He was one of a kind. Someone else may come along and hit more home runs. Someone may have a greater career.

“But I’m telling you, there will never be another man like him.”