The Hammer and the three calls

 

Hank Aaron died today at the age of 86. This loss is monstrous for more than baseball.

Henry was an ambassador for the sport and civil rights.

He was also the epitome of grace and class.

And Hank Aaron -- "Hammerin' Hank" -- was a great baseball player. Like, GREAT. A legitimate use of the word "great."

I saw him hit home run number 715, which surpassed Babe Ruth, on Apr 8, 1974. I watched in the living room on our big color TV (my parents had an old black and white Zenith in their bedroom).

The game was on Monday Night Baseball on NBC with Curt Gowdy and Tony Kubek on the call. Milo Hamilton called the game on Braves radio while Vin Scully (who else?) called it on Dodgers radio.

The Gowdy call is hard to find. I came across it on a documentary, "Play By Play: A History of Sports Television" which aired on HBO in 1991. I recorded most of the play-by-play calls from that two-part series. It was the first time I had heard some of Scully's older calls, like the Don Larsen perfect game of 1956.

So, Gowdy's was included in a montage at the end of the broadcast (which you can tell because of the music running underneath it). I eventually edited all three calls together as a way of demonstrating different play-by-play styles.

A Google search for the Gowdy call reveals it's still difficult to find.

Today, with Aaron's passing, there are many who are nosing around looking for the Scully call and the Hamilton call. Both are easy to find.

Incidentally, the video used on Scully's call of Aaron is the NBC broadcast, minus Curt Gowdy's voice. Vin's is laid on top.

But the Gowdy call? Take a look at the number of stories, blogs, etc who have linked to or embedded an unsourced sound file of "Hank Aaron - 715th Home Run - three different calls."

For instance, go to the bottom of this 2019 story that ran on AL.com. Now, compare it to this one. It's the same file, right?

The same one I created and edited probably 20 plus years ago.

It gets used a lot and always uncredited. Such is life.

It makes me smile.

But, today, I'm sad. Hank was 86 and wasn't getting around well, but still seeing his passing struck as a huge loss.

We lost an icon. A true hero, actually. We lost youth and innocence. We hoped he'd still be at Cooperstown again for the induction ceremony.

We're a sadder game today. A sadder world.

An all-star every year from 1955-1975. An MVP and a world champion. The 755 home runs. His total bases were a still-record 6,856 and he still holds the RBI record at 2,297. They're astounding numbers that only slightly begin to tell the story of Hank Aaron.

Truly beloved everywhere, except for the number of neanderthals who sent death threats to him as he closed in on Ruth's record. Most can't even imagine the awful racism and hatred Aaron dealt with.

Plus the disgusting behavior of Bowie Kuhn, the baseball commissioner who is a stain on the gallery of the Baseball Hall of Fame with his inclusion. Aaron wanted to tie and break the record in Atlanta, in front of the home fans.

He then insisted that Aaron play on the road, where The Hammer tied the record, in Cincinnati.

Then, when Aaron did break the record, Kuhn was not in Atlanta, something Tony Kubek ripped him for on the NBC broadcast.

Aaron stayed above all of it. He always did.

While that magical night was remembered by Scully in his broadcast as a "marvelous moment," allow me to paraphrase those emotions.

"What a sad moment for baseball. What a sad moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a sad moment for the country and the world."

Rest well, Hammer. Thanks for everything.