Hank Aaron (part seven)
The seasons and highlights of Hank Aaron almost unfold for him in a way meant for his own superhero comic book. With each hammering of the bat that smacks against the seams of the baseball, a speech bubble drawn as a cloud from the skies and outlined by lightning, reading not the words Pop or Zap or Kazam, but instead the words from Exodus, Let My People Go.
Sending balls deep over the left field wall, the centerfield wall and hitting in the opposite direction over the right field wall, hitting his way toward and knocking down the doors of destiny.
These seasons ought to have been a celebration of triumph and a testament to the endurance of human will and the most exciting moment in his life, and it instead was the toughest and most dreadful, most agonizing and stressful time he’d ever undergo, ever endure, ever live through.
Deep down where the soul speaks the language of the heavens he was so furious at this point in his life, in paraphrasing his own words, and exhausted, physically and emotionally, and uncaring about a record, and so disgusted with the ways of how certain people could act in America that all he wanted to do was to quit and then leave this country and live some place where baseball and the name of Babe Ruth registered nothing in anybody’s minds.
He wanted to give it all up and be someplace where none of it mattered, where he could find peace, free of the hatred thrown upon him just because he was great, where he could be free from the expectation of greatness, from the fans and the country itself and the world too.
He wished more than anything at this point in his life to quit. He almost did. Ultimately, he stayed because of the Reverend King and because of his lifelong hero and borderline savior Jackie Robinson—he felt that he owed it to them, that he owed his family and himself and to everybody across the nation who ever looked up to him, who needed him. And so he stayed, and stayed hunting the record for the soul of every son of a bitch that ever called him the N-word.