Henry 'Hank' Aaron is dead, but his life's story is already at risk

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/ny-hank-aaron-history-20210123-vi4n6xwma5hd3ndzg4tneyhlqu-story.html

The number 755 is still revered, but the journey Henry Aaron took was being flattened in real-time on Friday, softening his edges into an ahistorical version of Hammerin’ Hank that doesn’t draw any blood. Dewrinkling and declawing Black heroes may take the appearance of a tribute, but diminishing Black pain erases the magnitude of Black achievement.

The Associated Press advanced this error by describing Aaron as a “baseball legend who endured racist threats with stoic dignity.” In their obituary, the AP wrote, “exuding grace and dignity, Aaron spoke bluntly but never bitterly on the many hardships thrown his way.”

ESPN’s Jeff Passan tweeted, then deleted, that Aaron “ignored hatred as he conquered baseball,” a pitiful choice of words to write about a man who has shared many times since retiring how deeply the hatred he encountered hurt and angered him. Worse was fellow Braves legend Chipper Jones, who wrote Aaron “had every right to be angry or militant.....but never was,” thinking this as a compliment. “He spread his grace on everything and every one (sic) he came in contact with.” Like Passan, Chipper served a junkball and the crowd teed off.

I should be careful to dismiss “grace” and “class,” as they are true of Aaron’s life and virtues in and of themselves. But what these men misunderstand is that those virtues are forged into limitations, the only register in which a Black person can respond to the racism they experience without suffering the consequences of raising their voice.

[Ferrets are Cool]

1. It's a damned shame that everyone isn't as perfect in their choice of words as you

BRADFORD WILLIAM DAVIS. Sheesh.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. Do what now?

[Ferrets are Cool]

4. In my opinion

he was nitpicking the lack of writing skills of others less versed in the art. The people he was chastising were trying in their own way to honor the passing of a great man, and he dissed it. Shame on him.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. The majority of obituaries and takeaways were written by professional writers, many of whom

used the common trope he describes. It's important to interrogate the language we use to describe things that happen.

[Ferrets are Cool]

6. As I stated...it is my opinion

Having been a follower of Passan for many years, I know him to be a very kind and nice person. He would never have intentionally said anything belittling what Mr. Aaron went through as a major leaguer chasing the record. Let's just leave it here.

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R!

[misanthrope]

7. Another corollary about Aaron's story

Several years ago, I interviewed a Mobile, Alabama native named Lonnie Johnson, an honest-to-goodness rocket scientist who grew up in the period when the civil rights movement was trying to wrest Jim Crow's grip from the necks of Southern Blacks. Lonnie went on to work in the space program for decades and along the way invented the Super Soaker water gun which brought him riches that fueled his more serious research efforts.

Johnson lives in Atlanta now. He mentioned a group of friends, all Mobile natives, all in Atlanta now, who would socialize together and share stories about the old times and how glad they were that they escaped Mobile. Those feelings were no doubt amplified by the contrast they experienced once they left.

Among that group was Henry Aaron. He felt and remembered every ounce of the Jim Crow system's weight and made no bones about the fact his hometown held no warm spot in his heart due to the indignities he suffered there.

Mobile didn't go out of its way to honor him either. There was one roadway (the Henry Aaron Loop) and a baseball stadium named for the internationally beloved baseball player. There were more honorifics in town for unrepentant Confederate naval commander Raphael Semmes than for Aaron.

I didn't bother printing anything about Aaron's or Johnson's hard feelings about their hometown. It wouldn't have had bearing on the story and would have been removed by my editors anyway. Mobilians are too comfortable in a widely held delusion the town was an oasis of racial harmony in an otherwise hate-filled state.

So even in remembering perhaps Mobile's most famous son, they have chosen to soften his story to make it more palatable for their preferred reality. Mobile's patrician mayor announced plans this week to have bronze statues Aaron and a handful of other natives who are also in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame commissioned and erected in a notably hard-to-reach spot downtown. The mayoral election is coming up this summer and he is facing opposition from the city's Black population.

[Solly Mack]

8. ...