The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron (19 page)

Branch Rickey, the bushy-eyed Mahatma who was running the Pirates, had tried during the 1955 season to buy Henry from the Braves, offering Perini $150,000. Had he accepted, the Pirate outfield would have featured Aaron and the newest Rickey prospect, a gifted Puerto Rican outfielder who went by the name of Clemente. The careers of Clemente and Aaron would always circle each other. When Clemente was a teenager and Aaron was tearing up the Sally League, it was the Braves that offered Clemente three times what the Dodgers put forth. But Clemente desired to play in New York more than he wanted money.

The problem of perception had nothing to do with Henry’s skills, which were universally admired. The problem was that there was always a new boy on the street—someone with a prettier swing or a better press agent, somebody with more panache, a stronger arm, or that special intangible you built magic around.

This time, in the spring of 1956, when Henry came to Bradenton, lashing line drives and fully healthy, it was another Robinson from California he encountered, this one in the Cincinnati system. His name was Frank and he was from Oakland, where, like Mobile, ballplayers seemed to grow out of the ground. Robinson had been a two-sport star at McClymonds High, on Oakland’s west side, the alma mater of Bill Russell, the star basketball player. Oakland would always be fertile baseball territory, and Cincinnati had hit the trifecta. In addition to Robinson, the Reds had just signed a young black center fielder from Oakland Technical High named Curtis Flood, and they had the inside track on another McClymonds kid everyone was talking about: Vada Pinson.

Frank Robinson was listed as being six one and weighing 190 pounds, just an inch and ten pounds bigger than Aaron, but he was built like a football player and possessed an intimidating presence. Where Henry was slender in the arms and calves and thicker in the waist, Frank Robinson carried his muscle in his chest and shoulders. Virtually overnight, Henry’s stage grew crowded even before the curtain went up. Mays was omnipresent, Banks hit for more power than any National League shortstop, and now the word was this kid Robinson might be so good that the down-and-out Reds could even make a little noise. The hype machine was always looking for fresh material, especially during spring training, when for every legend born, thirty never produced a thing.

E
RNIE
W
HITE
, the old pitcher who won seventeen games for the Cardinals in 1941 and was a teammate of Warren Spahn in Boston, was the first to feed the machine enthusiastically, this time in an INS news wire item on March 17, 1956. After watching big Frank tattoo a couple of balls, White gushed, and in the process, he started a trend that would hound Henry Aaron for his entire career.

ROBBY HAS REDS BUZZING
⁷²

Ernie White, former hurler for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Boston Bees who managed Robinson last year at Columbia, added:

“I was managing Columbia when Hank Aaron tore the Sally League apart for Jacksonville. Robinson can outdo Aaron in everything. He’ll outrun him and he’ll outhit him. He has great power to all fields.”

During spring training, Henry seemed especially focused on the Dodgers, perhaps just to show that at least one member of the Braves wasn’t intimidated by Newcombe or Drysdale, Robinson or the moment. Henry dominated the champs all spring, hitting .552 against them, including four home runs. Walt Alston, the Dodger manager and Aaron admirer, said, “What’s more, he’s likely to hit .552 all season.”

Even Robinson, ferocious competitor that he was, understood Henry possessed the ability to be feared, and he was forced to give a tip of the cap. Roger Kahn recalled a story about Henry stealing second base during spring training that year. When he swiped second a second time, Robinson landed on Henry, pinned him hard to the dirt, and began filling Henry’s spikes with handfuls of dirt.

“Jackie, what are you doing?”
⁷³
Henry cried.

“I’m making sure you don’t steal on me again.”

C
ERTAINLY
, there were chances for populism, magical opportunities for the words and deeds to meld, chances to be beautiful.
Look
magazine loved Aaron, naming him “a lock” to win the batting title. “Hank is a ‘3-L hitter’: lean, loose and lethal,” the magazine said. “His batting secret is his supple, powerful wrists.”
The Chicago Defender
, the influential black newspaper, ran an AP story, following
Look’s
lead, predicting Henry would win the batting crown.

AARON PICKED TO WIN
⁷⁴
NATIONAL BATTING TITLE

Some of the keenest baseball observers are convinced that the leading hitter … will be a 22-year-old … outfielder for the Milwaukee Braves. This unobtrusive athlete is Hank Aaron.

Aaron does not have the dramatic flair of Willie Mays or the oversized press buildup of Mickey Mantle.

The AP continued the drumbeat, comparing him to white stars like Hall of Famers Paul Waner and Joe Medwick (so what if the comparison to Ducky was a tad backhanded, ripping Henry for his Medwick-like ability to stretch the strike zone from his ankles to his forehead and points north). Best of all, there was the bus ride back north to Milwaukee and the start of the campaign, when Bob Wolf, the
Journal
beat man who was moonlighting for
The Sporting News
, sat with Grimm for what must have been hours. Grimm believed the Braves were going to win the pennant, and he told Wolf just how they were going to do it, how despite Conley’s fragile arm, the pitching would be better than ever and that pitching was how championships were won. Grimm chewed Wolf’s ear about how the Braves young guns were going to be a threat for years, well into the 1960s, sizzling past the Dodgers, the Reds, the Cardinals, all of them. But his most melodic tones were saved for his twenty-two-year-old right fielder.

“Aaron,” Charlie Grimm said. “Aaron, of course, is the prize.”

G
RIMM BELIEVED
and the Braves believed, but when opening day neared, the scribes weren’t sold. Maybe they didn’t want to get burned again (the year before, the writers had said the Braves had arrived, only to eat crow after the first week of the season). The New York hold on the World Series, at least in the minds of the writers, wasn’t going to be broken in 1956, with the fierce-swinging Henry or without him.

DODGERS, YANKS PICKED TO WIN
⁷⁵
FLAGS BY
FOUR OF EVERY FIVE WRITERS IN POLL

The vote of 109 writers who “experted” the pennant races for The Associated Press was so lopsided it was almost no contest…. The Yanks had eighty-eight firsts and Brooklyn had eighty-six. A similar poll of 110 writers a year ago predicted pennants for the Cleveland Indians and Milwaukee Braves.

T
HE 1956 CURTAIN
went up on a drizzly afternoon, April 17, and Henry immediately set about his business. The first victim was Bob Rush of the Chicago 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 Bruton tripled. Rush headed to the showers and the Braves cruised to a 6–0 win.

The Braves swept the Cubs three straight, and it seemed that maybe Charlie had a better handle on his team than Perini thought. Grimm’s charges won nine out of twelve, but everything seemed just a bit off. Rain wiped out a week of games, and every hot start was followed by a sputter. The Braves were 13–7 after twenty games, in first place, during which time the Dodgers couldn’t get out of their own way. But instead of building on the lead, the Braves fell back, getting demolished in a doubleheader by the Pirates (Pittsburgh
again)
5–0 and 13–8.

In the opener of a Memorial Day weekend doubleheader at Wrigley, the Braves tied a big-league record by hitting three consecutive home runs in the first inning. Mathews hit a two-out homer off the short-fused former Dodger Russ Meyer. Henry followed with another and Bobby Thomson yanked yet another over the left-field fence. Meyer, now breathing fire, guaranteed his next pitch would stay in the park by throwing a strike off Bruton’s right cheekbone. Bruton crumpled. After a moment, he steadied himself with his bat, took a few wobbly steps toward first base, then raced toward Meyer. Bruton dropped the bat and caught Meyer with a left to the body. Grimm raced from the third-base coaching box and corralled Meyer by the neck. As the benches cleared, Meyer and Bruton kicked each other at the bottom of the pile. The
Chicago Defender
would call the brawl a “near riot.” Aaron, years later, would call it the worst fight he’d ever seen.
The Sporting News
said Meyer and Bruton fought to a “split decision” but that the big loser was battered and bruised Charlie Grimm, who paid the price for trying to make the peace.

Nothing could awaken the Braves like a good fight. They hit five homers that night but lost the game 10–9. The next night, Thomson hit two more and Henry exploded with a homer, a double, three RBIs, and three runs scored in an 11–9 demolition of the Cubs.

In the finale, a 15–8 win the next afternoon, the Braves led 14–0 after four innings and, in a ten-inning span over the two-game onslaught, hit
seven
homers off one guy, sad-sack Cubs hurler Warren Hacker. In the three games, the Braves hit fourteen home runs, incited the Cubs to fisticuffs, and had their best record of the season at 19–10. They were in first place, with six fewer losses than the Dodgers. A power display, plus wins, and punching out the other team added up to the sort of weekend that provided the best kind of energy boost for a club. Plus, the Braves were coming home for fifteen games against lowly Pittsburgh, the Dodgers (a chance for an early knockout, perhaps?), Mays and the Giants, and the hard-luck Phillies.

But in the opener, Spahn took a 1–0 lead into the eighth against the Pirates and gave up four runs in a 4–1 loss. Something was wrong with the meal ticket. He had started the season 3–0 and was now 3–4. “You didn’t even worry about Spahn,”
⁷⁶
recalled Gene Conley. “Even before spring training began, you penciled him in for his twenty wins, because he was doing the same thing. To see him not win, you had to wonder a little bit.” Pittsburgh beat Conley the following day and then split a doubleheader the next to take three of four.

Then came the Dodgers, who were 20–19, the defending champs standing in place. These were the games where great teams both revealed themselves and could use the emotional currency of winning to deflate their opponents in future meetings. In the opener, in front of a buzzing, nervous 27,788 souls, Sal Maglie led Burdette 1–0 in the eighth before Lew gave up homers to Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges, while Maglie walked away with a complete-game, three-hit shutout. Perini stood and smoldered as the home folks who were good for complimentary dry cleaning booed his team. The catcalls increased the next day, when Roger Craig beat Spahn 6–1 on a two-hitter. Spahn had collected just one out in the second inning and was gone. He was now 3–5, but the guy whom fans wanted to see with an apple in his mouth was Grimm. When Newcombe beat Conley 5–2, the Braves were 1–6 on the home stand and suddenly in fourth place.

Expectations had swallowed them whole, and under the weight of having to perform, the Braves were disintegrating. Spahn told writers that the team was under “terrible tension.” Charlie Root, the Braves pitching coach, who had played for Grimm’s pennant winners with the Cubs in 1932 and 1935, the man who went back decades with Grimm, said the skipper was “jittery” and that he had been able to feel the tension on the club since joining the team before spring training. Following a 7–2 loss against the Giants—when Adcock and Logan made errors in a four-run third—John Quinn told Grimm he wanted to talk to the team. Like a dad scolding his little kid, Quinn made Grimm sit in the clubhouse and listen while he let the Braves have it. They weren’t hustling, Quinn said. Quinn looked around the room—at Aaron and Mathews, Burdette and Spahn and the rest—frothing that they were “letting down the fans” and “letting down the club as well.”

When Quinn finished setting fire to their tail feathers, a somber Grimm closed the door and told his boys, “I may not be here much longer, but as long as I am, nobody is going to tell you fellas anything like that. You are hustling. You’re hustling so much that you’re pressing. I know darn well that you want to win as much as anybody.”

Against the Giants, Spahn lost again, 3–1 to Johnny Antonelli, the man traded for the plummeting Thomson. Playing left, Henry committed an error and, representing the tying run, flied out to left to end the game. Before the final game of the home stand, Grimm composed himself, confronted Quinn, and told him he’d had no right to dress down his team. That was Charlie’s way. Quinn and Perini had never played the game at the big-league level and, as far as he was concerned, they didn’t know how hard it was. He was the manager, but the player in Charlie Grimm always ruled. In the meeting, Grimm was fired up, and he decided he wanted answers. He wanted to know where he stood as the manager, not just on that day but in the future. He wanted an assurance that Quinn would leave his team alone and let him manage. What he got instead was a phone call from Perini, who said coldly, “We’re going to discuss your case when you get to New York.”

Spahn finished the home stand by striking out ten in a 5–2 win over the Giants to snap the losing streak and save face. Willie went three for three with a homer, but the Braves had finally won a game. Even so, the Milwaukee fans didn’t bring milk and cheese to the yard, but more boos. In losing ten of the fifteen games of the home stand, Milwaukee scored forty-one runs. In those three games against the Cubs alone, the Braves had scored thirty-five. They may have been only two games out after the carnage, but the Braves had come home in first place and now left for the longest road trip of the year in fifth, officially in the second division behind Cincinnati, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and the Dodgers. The Braves hit the road with a record of 24–20. The first stop—and the last for Charlie Grimm—was Brooklyn.