Hank Aaron Autographs, Memorabilia & Collectibles

Full name Henry Louis Aaron
Born February 5, 1934, Mobile, Alabama
First Game: April 13, 1954;
Final Game: October 3, 1976
Bat: Right Throw: Right Height: 6' 0" Weight: 180
Brother of Tommie Aaron

Selected to the Hall of Fame in 1982
Named NL Most Valuable Player by Baseball Writers' Association of America (1957)
Named NL Player of the Year by The Sporting News (1956 and 1963)
Named outfielder on The Sporting News Major League All-Star Team (1956 and 1958 to 1959)
Named outfielder on The Sporting News NL All-Star Team (1963, 1965, 1967 and 1969 to 1971)
Won NL Gold Glove as right fielder (1958 to 1960)

HANK AARON
This article was written by Bill Johnson and is presented in part, courtesy of the Society for American Baseball Research

“Henry Aaron in the second inning walked and scored. He’s sittin’ on 714. Here’s the pitch by Downing. Swinging. There’s a drive into left-center field! That ball is gonna be … outta here! It’s gone! It’s 715! There’s a new home run champion of all time, and it’s Henry Aaron!”  - Milo Hamilton, April 8, 1974

With that swing of the bat, along with the 714 that preceded it, Hank Aaron not only passed Babe Ruth as Major League Baseball’s career home run leader, but he also made a giant leap in the integration of the game and the nation. Aaron, an African-American, had broken a record set by the immortal Ruth, and not just any record, but the all-time major league home run record, and in doing so moved the game and the nation forward on the journey started by Jackie Robinson in 1947. By 1974 Aaron’s baseball career was within three years of sunset, but the road he’d travelled to arrive at that spring evening in Atlanta had hardened and tempered him, perhaps irrevocably, in ways that only suffering can produce.  Aaron finally shrugged off the twin burdens of expectation and fear that evening, and few have ever stood taller.

Henry Louis Aaron was born February 5, 1934, in Mobile Alabama, to Herbert and Estella (Pritchett) Aaron. Among Henry’s seven siblings was a brother, Tommie, who later played in parts of seven different seasons in the major leagues. For whatever such records are worth, the brothers still hold the record for most career home runs by a pair of siblings, 768, with the elder Henry contributing 755 to Tommie’s 13. They were also the first siblings to appear in a League Championship Series as teammates.