The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron (50 page)

Being that close, closer than all the rest, it was Dusty and Ralph who could best see the growing tension between Henry and Barbara, and it was Dusty upon whom Henry would rely. “Barbara treated me like a member of the family. She treated me like one of her own. There were people around the ballpark who said this or said that, but I’m not one of them. I was around Hank when things began to go sour between them, and it was a hard time. I have nothing bad to say about Barbara Aaron. I watched Hank deal the way Hank deals with everything—he tried to keep focused. He didn’t want to put his problems off on everybody else. Those times were definitely rough on Hank.”

Henry and Barbara had been together for fifteen years, since they were teenagers, were together as dreams came true and were in the public eye as America confronted itself and came steadily apart. The players’ wives were often a tight sorority, enjoying the fortunes of the baseball life, but it was different for black women. They were accepted as begrudgingly at the bake sales and charity events as their husbands often were on the ball field, but sometimes it could all be too much. In a 1995 documentary, Barbara would talk about the vitriol in the stands directed at the black players, her husband among them.

Too often, she had to sit and take it. The wives always did. The baseball world, first a boys club, then an integrated boys club, was never sympathetic toward her. Barbara was not popular among those in the Braves front office; they insulted her and Henry by accusing her of being behind his evolving politics.

And then there was the infamous evening
¹⁹⁷
of July 30, 1966, when Barbara entered the player’s parking lot at Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium before a Braves-Giants game and the attendant at the entrance gate refused to allow her in. Words were exchanged, an Atlanta policeman intervened, and Barbara drove past. The officer, L. W. Begwood, ordered her to stop. What occurred next would become a matter of debate. Barbara would say that Begwood removed his service revolver from his holster. Begwood would say that he placed his hand on his weapon but did not remove it from its holster. What was not in dispute was Barbara’s arrest and the subsequent three-week suspension of three Atlanta police officers involved in the incident. The publicity was bad all around—for the Braves, who in their first season were trying to cultivate a fan base in a racially tenuous city; for Henry, who called the officers “incompetent”; and especially for Barbara, who Braves officials thought overreacted. “That woman,” a Braves official said, “drove everyone crazy.”

Henry would not talk much about the details of his home life, but now it was coming apart, for too many reasons to count. Henry put on a good face—the best, in fact—and Ralph loved him for it. It went back to chopping the wood. “You could never tell at the plate
¹⁹⁸
what was going on with Henry. We knew he had his problems, but when he came to work—professional. He might have had the worst day at home, but when he got to the ballpark—nothing. Nothing got between Henry Aaron and his business.”

And in return, he was their unquestioned hero. They called him “Supe,” short for “Superman.” And they called him “Hammer.” And they called him “44.” Maybe they didn’t invent the nicknames, but they used them with such affection and reverence and
frequency
that Henry was transformed into a different person, always the silent backbone of a club, but certainly now something more. He was the wise elder for this new group of kids, and they did not do anything without checking with Henry first. “You could feel it. He was that guy that you did not want thinking any less of you,” Ralph Garr recalled. “In the back of your mind, he was the standard. You didn’t want to do anything that Henry wouldn’t do. If Henry could be on time for the team bus,
you
could be on time for the team bus. If Henry could play hurt,
you
could play hurt. We saw him do things that just made everybody want to be that much more professional. You have to understand just how much we looked up to this man, what he meant to us. Nobody wanted to be the one to disappoint Henry Aaron.”

During that time, there was another youngster, too, who looked up to Henry: Clarence Edwin Gaston, who went by the nickname “Cito,” a Texan from Corpus Christi who had played in the Braves minor-league system in Waycross, Georgia, and Greenville, South Carolina. During the season in spring 1967, Henry requested that Cito Gaston room with him, and, quite likely channeling his own home life with Barbara, an education ensued.

“I had the fortune to room with a guy
¹⁹⁹
who was my idol growing up as a kid. He taught me how to tie a tie. He taught me how to be an independent thinker coming into the big leagues,” Gaston recalled. “He taught me that no matter what happened in the game to forget it. If you had a good game, leave it at the ballpark. And if you had a bad day at home, don’t bring that to the ballpark. He taught me about concentration.” And he told Gaston that the inverse was also true, a rule he had been practicing firsthand as his relationship with Barbara declined: If you had a bad day at the park, don’t bring it home and take it out on the family.

It was the ethic that Henry wanted to impart to the kids, and sometimes he could do it with a look. If Dusty was spending too much time in the trainer’s room, it was Henry who could give him
that
look and Baker would have to reassess very quickly just how hurt he truly was. Maybe he
could
play after all. And then, suddenly, Dusty would be in the lineup. If Garr looked gassed in between games of a doubleheader but saw Henry, nearly twelve years his senior, taped and ready and dressed, suddenly Garr knew he had better find that extra fuel reserve, lest he drop in Henry’s esteem. Being a professional meant playing through pain, and so what if Henry’s pain threshold just happened to be abnormal. Somewhere, he would always remind Dusty and Ralph and Cito (who would be with him only in 1967, although Henry would have a lifelong impact on Cito Gaston) not to forget the special burden that came with being a black player. It meant playing with pain, leading by stellar example, and being accountable, for black players were quite often the easiest ones to be gotten rid of. Make it hard on them, Henry would tell the kids. Make it hard for them to get rid of you. And it was in that context that Henry would drop his famous credo on Garr. “He used to tell me all the time,
²⁰⁰
whenever something hurt and I maybe needed a break. He would always point to guys that were hurt, or maybe hurt, and maybe they could play but they didn’t, and he’d say, ‘Ralph, you can’t help your club from the tub.’”

And then there was the question that Ralph Garr swished around in his mouth, grading its texture before offering a verdict: how to anger the cool and even Henry Aaron. The answer would have far-reaching consequences.

“Cheating,” Garr said.

“You want to make the man angry? Just cheat. That’ll do it. Henry wants a fair match, what you got against what he’s got. I remember one time in San Francisco and Gaylord Perry was on the mound throwing them spitballs. Henry fouled one off, and instead of letting the umpire or the catcher pick it up,
he picked it up
. Then he took it, rubbed the wetness off the ball, and
rolled
it back to the pitcher’s mound, looking right at him the whole time. That was Henry’s way of telling Gaylord Perry, ‘I’m
onto
you, son.’”

T
HE KIDS LISTENED
, but there was one who got away. When he first arrived in Bradenton from the dusty nothingness of San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic in the spring of 1964, armed with expectations of greatness but no road map on how to attain it, it was Henry who told Joe Taylor to put Rico Carty’s spring-training locker close to his. Henry wanted to teach the kid, who spoke little English—and the bit he knew was accompanied by an accent that provided an easy target for enemies—about the big leagues, wanted to make sure he succeeded. Carty was a strapping presence—six three, two hundred pounds—who swung a bat nearly as viciously as Henry. He wasn’t exactly in the millionth percentile, as Henry had been, but anyone who looked at Rico Carty, from his teammates to the manager Bobby Bragan, knew that if nothing else, Carty was a major-league hitter.

There was something in the way the kid wandered around camp that spring that reminded Henry of himself ten years earlier; a black player with ability whom no one seemed to be helping. Carty was unsure of himself. Learning language was not easy and, as Henry had learned from Felix Mantilla years earlier, the southern racial customs could be jarring to Latino players unused to the Deep South.

So it came to pass that Henry
requested
that Ricardo Adolfo Jacobo Carty room with him that spring. Henry watched as the press had its way with Carty, quoting him phonetically, as it did virtually all Latin American stars, the great Clemente included. “Already he ees showing me
²⁰¹
how to talk better, how to act, what to wear,”
Sport
magazine quoted Carty as saying of Henry. “He make me feel big, too. He ees even showing me about HEETING!”

Henry worked with Carty, taught him how to position himself in the outfield and how to set up pitchers at the plate. To the writers, Carty referred to Henry as “compadre.” Carty told the writers that it was Henry who was making him into a good player. He had taken a promising player under his wing.

Once Carty grew comfortable in the big leagues during that summer of 1964, when he finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting (even if it was to Richie Allen, eighteen first-place votes to one) and his numbers—.330, twenty-two homers, eighty-eight runs driven in—exceeded Henry’s back in 1954, well, Rico Carty started to crave the lights of the big time, and, in turn, Henry became less mentor and more nuisance. Henry was too bland. Rico wanted to be big.

Carty began calling himself “Beeg Boy,” and if rookies were supposed to be seen and not heard in those days, Carty created for himself a new paradigm. He was loud in the clubhouse, full of charisma and charm and bluster, at once endearing and annoying.

He moved with a swagger. If Henry was understated in dress and public comportment, Carty had adopted an outsized personality, prone to the kind of attention seeking that ran counter to how Henry believed a big-leaguer should carry himself. Henry ran the bases, caught the ball, and swung the bat with purpose. Carty brought flair and dash to everything, from fielding to interviews. When Carty did something great at the plate, he would run out to his spot in the outfield the next inning and doff his cap to the Milwaukee crowd, waving with both hands as if he had a chance to win the Wisconsin primary. Once, after Carty tossed a ball into the County Stadium crowd after making a spectacular catch for the third out, the Texan Bragan turned to his bench coach Dixie Walker, another southerner, and said, “You know something, Dixie? I believe that fellow is capturin’ their imagination.”

When he struck out, he would slam the bat into the dirt half a dozen times, charismatic, maybe, but bush-league stuff to the pros—the kind of shenanigans that could get you a fastball stuck in your ear the next time up. When he thought the blue missed one, Carty would spin his head quickly backward, ready for debate, showing up the umpire but commanding the stage. When Carty began to encourage his flamboyant side, it could only mean trouble with Henry, who once explained his demeanor thusly: “I don’t smile when I have a bat in my hand. That’s the time for business.”

In the outfield, Henry taught Carty the classic method of catching the ball: run to the spot the ball will land and wait for it. That was the way the legends did it. That was how they made it look easy. When Carty began feeling he belonged, Henry’s teaching went the way of the dinosaurs, and Rico would run at full speed, hat flying, buttons popping, only to catch the ball at his waist, a basket catch, with Broadway flair. Some of his teammates believed the showman in him
purposely
started after easy flies late, to give routine catches an added panache.

In later years, Carty’s act would have been considered normal, a perfect performance for the television age, for the me show that would one day define professional sports. But in the 1960s, baseball was still a newspaper game, run by men who possessed a healthy fear of the game’s ability to humble, and humility was the only way to show respect.

“I don’t know if I’m talking out of school,
²⁰²
but Rico just rubbed guys the wrong way,” Tito Francona said. “But Rico was kind of a showboat and a loudmouth.

“He had loads of talent, but not many guys liked him. I remember one day we’re in the clubhouse and he’s got
eighty
pairs of shoes, all different styles and colors,” Francona recalled. “And some of the guys are laughing, and some are just looking at him. So, I go over to Felipe Alou and I say, ‘Hey, what’s
with
this guy?’ And Felipe looks at me and says, ‘Well, what would
you
do if you had been living in the jungle your whole life?’”