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The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, by Howard Bryant
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In the thirty-four years since his retirement, Henry (Hank) Aaron’s reputation has only grown in magnitude. But his influence extends beyond statistics, and at long last here is the first definitive biography of one of baseball’s immortal figures.
Based on meticulous research and extensive interviews The Last Hero reveals how Aaron navigated the upheavals of his time—fighting against racism while at the same time benefiting from racial progress—and how he achieved his goal of continuing Jackie Robinson’s mission to obtain full equality for African Americans, both in baseball and society, while he lived uncomfortably in the public eye. Eloquently written, detailed and penetrating, this is a revelatory portrait of a complicated, private man who through sports became an enduring American icon.
- Sales Rank: #1002379 in Books
- Published on: 2010-05-11
- Released on: 2010-05-11
- Format: Deckle Edge
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.55" h x 1.50" w x 6.40" l, 2.26 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 624 pages
Amazon.com Review
In the thirty-four years since his retirement, Henry Aaron’s reputation has only grown in magnitude: he broke existing records (rbis, total bases, extra-base hits) and set new ones (hitting at least thirty home runs per season fifteen times, becoming the first player in history to hammer five hundred home runs and three thousand hits). But his influence extends beyond statistics, and at long last here is the first definitive biography of one of baseball’s immortal figures.
Based on meticulous research and interviews with former teammates, family, two former presidents, and Aaron himself, The Last Hero chronicles Aaron’s childhood in segregated Alabama, his brief stardom in the Negro Leagues, his complicated relationship with celebrity, and his historic rivalry with Willie Mays—all culminating in the defining event of his life: his shattering of Babe Ruth’s all-time home-run record.
Bryant also examines Aaron’s more complex second act: his quest to become an important voice beyond the ball field when his playing days had ended, his rediscovery by a public disillusioned with today’s tainted heroes, and his disappointment that his career home-run record was finally broken by Barry Bonds during the steroid era, baseball’s greatest scandal.
Bryant reveals how Aaron navigated the upheavals of his time—fighting against racism while at the same time benefiting from racial progress—and how he achieved his goal of continuing Jackie Robinson’s mission to obtain full equality for African-Americans, both in baseball and society, while he lived uncomfortably in the public spotlight. Eloquently written, detailed and penetrating, this is a revelatory portrait of a complicated, private man who through sports became an enduring American icon.
Questions for Howard Bryant on The Last Hero
Q: Why Henry Aaron?
A: After my second book, Juicing the Game, the natural progression for my thought process was heading toward one question: "Who in baseball do you admire? Is there anyone this sport can be proud of?" It wasn't simply the fatigue of writing about steroids and tainted heroes that drifted me toward Henry Aaron, but because the steroids scandal occurring during the same time as the housing-and-mortgage scandal told me something larger was taking place in this country, that the value systems we ostensibly seek--honor, integrity, accountability--were becoming almost quaint. In baseball, as the drug scandal intensified, players would tell me, "If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying." It was that level of cynicism that made me consider writing about someone who certainly was not perfect but had a larger mission for himself beyond money, that here was a person for whom those values are not quaint.
Q: Did he cooperate?
A: It took roughly eighteen months for him to agree to speak with me. I first began working on this project in May 2006 and that was in the middle of when Barry Bonds was nearing Henry’s record. Henry Aaron wanted nothing to do with the Bonds record chase. He didn't want to be asked questions about Bonds, did not want to be placed in the debate about anabolic steroids. He did not want to engage at all.
When Henry's attorney, Allan Tanenbaum, and I spoke for the first time, he was extremely pessimistic about the book and the public's reaction to Henry Aaron. He was convinced that the public did not care about him except in being positioned as the polar opposite of Bonds. He was certain that I was only interested in one thing: Bonds. Over many phone calls spanning several months (the key conversation taking place over Thanksgiving 2007), Allan finally accepted that my motives for writing the book had nothing to do with Bonds and everything to do with a man I considered to be an American icon.
A few months later, on January 31 (ironically on Jackie Robinson’s birthday), Henry Aaron and I had our first phone call. He was extremely pleasant and engaging but echoed Allan's sentiments about his own life. "People don’t care about me," he told me. "They only care about what I did as a baseball player. There’s more to me than that." I was amazed at the considerable divide that existed between the enthusiasm I received whenever I mentioned the possibility of writing about Henry and what he considered to be the public's perception of him.
Q: What most surprised you during the writing/research?
A: There were many surprising aspects of the research, which is why I truly love to research and write books. Whatever your initial thoughts of your subject are, they will invariably be altered the deeper you learn.
I was as guilty as anyone in following the accepted Aaron myth: played in Milwaukee, was always overshadowed by players in bigger markets, snuck up on even the shrewdest evaluators of talent from the day he entered the big leagues to the day when suddenly he and not Willie Mays was in the best position to break Babe Ruth's all-time home run record.
None of this is true, and that was the most surprising thing. Henry Aaron was a phenom, a top prospect from the day he joined the Indianapolis Clowns. He was a comet tearing through each level in the minor leagues, and when he arrived for his first spring in Bradenton, Florida in 1954, all eyes were on him to be the next great player.
The myth came later. As the Milwaukee Braves fell in the standings at the beginning of the 1960s, people did begin to forget about Henry, and he quietly accumulated Hall of Fame numbers. But that was only because the public lost interest in a losing team, not because it was unaware of his enormous ability.
Q: What is the lasting legacy of Henry Aaron?
A: A famous sociologist told me during an interview that the steroid scandal has created a gap between the record holders and the standard bearers of major league baseball. Barry Bonds is a record holder. Henry Aaron is a standard bearer. The latter is far more important and valuable than the former.
And it carries weight beyond the baseball diamond, where Henry always wanted respect. He spent his life being compared on the baseball diamond to Willie Mays, but Henry Aaron wanted to follow in the legacy of Jackie Robinson, to use his platform to provide opportunities for people who did not have them. Baseball was simply a means to that end.
Photographs from The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron
(Click on Thumbnails to Enlarge)
Jacksonville, 1953 Bradenton, 1957 Aaron and Family
Aaron in Atlanta Breaking Babe's Record Aaron Today
From Publishers Weekly
This biography of the African-American baseball great doesn't amount to the epic it wants to be. ESPN reporter Bryant (Juicing the Game) portrays Aaron's journey from Jim Crow Alabama to superstardom with the Milwaukee, then Atlanta Braves during the 1950s, '60s, and '70s as both a sports saga and a struggle against racism. (The Braves' spring training facilities stayed segregated into the 1960s, and Aaron's 1974 breaking of Babe Ruth's home run record was marred by racist death threats.) But while the author takes very seriously the sports commentator's traditional task of investing trivia with near-biblical portentousness—And thus it came to pass that Henry Aaron became the first black majority owner of the first BMW franchise in the country—he never quite succeeds at establishing Aaron's heroic stature. The slugger comes off as a superlatively skillful but unspectacular player whose civil rights activism is cautious and muted (though more outspoken later when he became a Braves executive). Throughout, he's a wary, reticent man given to rancor over slights, and the narrative can't help wandering toward more charismatic figures like Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson. Mightily as he swings, Bryant fails to knock Aaron's story out of the park. Photos. (May 11)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Bryant, a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN the Magazine, delivers a definitive biography of Hall-of-Famer Henry Aaron, whose reputation only grows as those of such modern-day sluggers as Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez become tainted. Bryant’s research here is exhaustive, but it only serves to add texture and context to Aaron’s compelling story, which starts with an impoverished but proud Mobile, Alabama, boyhood, then follows Aaron’s long and steady trajectory as the greatest home-run hitter (if not player) of his generation, ending with Aaron’s public and private responses to the breaking of his home-run record by Bonds in 2007. There’s thorough, concise play-by-play of Aaron’s benchmark games; good background on such seminal events as the Milwaukee Braves’ move to Atlanta in 1966; and a solid account of Aaron’s agonizing though successful conquest of Babe Ruth’s homer mark, in 1974. And Bryant addresses the long-standing rivalry between Aaron and Willie Mays, giving justice to both careers—James S. Hirsch’s Willie Mays (2010) helps do that, too—while showing that Aaron’s stats more than hold their own. Must reading for baseball fans of every generation. --Alan Moores
Most helpful customer reviews
50 of 52 people found the following review helpful.
A different kind of baseball book
By Geoffrey Precourt
Don't get me wrong: All the bits and pieces we all love about baseball are here--the great games, the odd sets of personalities, the drama of a penant race (or two or three) and, yes. the march toward Ruth's record. But Byrant is a voracious reporter. He digs as deeply into the microfiche of Mobile newspapers from the '40s to track the beginnings of a legendary career. And, in doing so, he paints a portrait of the a time and place as fully dimensional as any proper historic treatment. And, in that sense, this isn't just a great baseball book. It's a great book about America--delivered with a sense of authority, a natural story-teller's comfortable grace and elegance, and a healthy sense of humor.
29 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
A Misunderstood Legend
By Larry Underwood
In a rather bizarre article in "Sport Magazine", written over 40 years ago, lamenting the lack of "superstars" in major league baseball, the following assessment of Henry Aaron was given: "He's a star; but he's not a superstar."
Today, we realize that was an inaccurate assessment of one of the greatest players the game has ever known; however, for most of his career, Henry Aaron was widely regarded as merely "a very good player"; certainly no Mays or Mantle. While Mays and Mantle got the national attention, Hank Aaron quietly went about his business, year in and year out; and business was good. For fifteen out of twenty-three seasons in the big leagues, Aaron pounded out 30 or more home runs; eleven times he had over 100 runs batted in, while accumulating a lifetime batting average of .305.
At long last, Howard Bryant has compiled this wonderfully comprehensive biography of this introverted superstar; in the process, the reader will come away with a better understanding of the man's accomplishments on and off the field. Henry Aaron certainly deserves the recognition; better late than never.
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
Good Story, Tough Subject, Terrible Editing
By John L. Autin
I both enjoyed and learned quite a bit from this book, which provides plenty of historical and biographical context that I did not know, despite being a dedicated amateur baseball historian. If the book does not deeply illuminate Henry Aaron, the man, that seems to reflect less the author's failure but more the simple fact that Aaron was and is fairly guarded, sometimes contradictory, and not (based on what I've read) especially articulate. It's still very much worth reading. I particularly liked the organization of the book into thematic (not purely chronological) chapters.
However, Mr. Bryant's gifts, as represented here, seem to lie more in developing themes than in the nuts-and-bolts of writing proper sentences, and the lack of editing and proofreading eventually becomes a serious distraction. The book contains dozens (if not hundreds) of punctuation errors, grammatical mistakes, ill-formed sentences, confusing and contradictory play-by-play accounts, misused words, etc.
The most frequent example is the consistent failure to use an apostrophe for the possessive form of the word "Braves":
-- "The Braves lead was now six."
-- "In the Braves first test under Haney...."
-- "For more than two seasons, he had been the Braves best pitcher...."
-- "... Perini beamed his gap-toothed smile as the Braves fifteen-by-thirty-seven-foot pennant was raised before the game."
-- "... maybe the Braves routine coldcocking of the Reds was the real reason...."
... and on, and on, and on.
Factual errors include:
-- "In 1952, the Boston Braves had officially become the Milwaukee Braves in between innings of a spring-training game...."
No, that was in 1953, as was clearly described earlier in the book.
Then there are bush-league sentences such as this:
-- "Standing on third, with one out, Bruton lofted a fly to center."
A 6th-grader could tell you what's wrong with that one.
Here's an example of garbled play-by-play, describing the 1956 season opener in which the Braves faced pitcher Bob Rush of the Cubs:
-- "Aaron drove in the game's first run in the fourth and then broke Rush in the sixth. Rush had appeared to be breezing toward the seventh: two quick outs and a 1-0 lead. Aaron took a strike and then roped a long homer to make it 2-0. Shaken, Rush fell apart. Thomson singled. Adcock hit another homer to make it 3-0 , ... and the Braves cruised to a 6-0 win."
Obviously, Rush never had a 1-0 lead, and Adcock's HR made the score 4-0.
These are but a few examples. Most are inconsequential, but they're obvious mistakes, and they disturb the flow of the narrative. Upon reading that "teammates thought of [Aaron] as a gifted hitter, if not a bit aloof," I had to read the paragraph again to be sure of the intended meaning.
Then there is the frequent use of the term "millionth percentile," referring to Aaron and other superstars. I can't find a definition on the web, probably because it's a nonsense term. A percentile scale runs from 1 to 100, and no higher. Here's a definition of "percentile" from Princeton University's website: "any of the 99 numbered points that divide an ordered set of scores into 100 parts each of which contains one-hundredth of the total." Thus, "millionth percentile" has no literal meaning. If it was meant as hyperbole, it should have been used more judiciously; I counted at least seven times that it appeared in this book.
It's a shame that Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, apparently did not consider this biography of one of baseball's greatest players worth spending a few bucks on a good editor and/or proofreader.
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