Photo Credit: Jean-Gabrel Fernandez
Several days following his sudden passing on Friday, much of the baseball world is still talking about Hank Aaron. Many of the stories being told have a common theme: They talk about the grace and courage he showed while chasing Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, even while an increasing volume of hate mail and death threats stacked up in his attic. By that point, however, Aaron had already been quietly battling racism in baseball for decades.
When Aaron debuted with the Milwaukee Braves it had been just four years since the first player had broken the franchise’s color barrier. Sam Jethroe, the first black player to appear in a game for either of Boston’s two MLB franchises, debuted and won the National League Rookie of the Year Award in 1950. Jethroe’s MLB tenure was brief, however, and ended abruptly under the shadow of racial tension.
Jethroe, a longtime veteran of the Negro Leagues, was a productive player in his first two seasons with the Braves but his career came off track in 1952, around the time the Braves replaced manager Tommy Holmes with longtime Cubs and minor league Milwaukee Brewers manager Charlie Grimm. In Jethroe’s SABR Bio he’s quoted as saying, “Charlie Grimm was a prejudiced man and he didn’t like me.” Their falling out included an accusation that Grimm had called Jethroe “Sambo.”
After a difficult 1952 season the Braves sent Jethroe to the minors for the 1953 season, their first in Milwaukee, and left him there all year despite the fact that he batted .309 with a .434 on-base percentage and .560 slugging for AAA Toledo. Jethroe played just two more MLB games in his career, with the 1954 Pirates, and later died in poverty at least partially attributed to his failure to meet the service time requirement for an MLB pension.
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Giving Hank a Shot
Two years after Jethroe’s unceremonious MLB departure, Hank Aaron reported to major league spring training for the first time with the Braves. Grimm, his new manager, had never seen the 20-year-old play but Aaron had already been promised to the AAA Toledo club for the season. Braves management was forced to change plans, however, when incumbent outfielder Bobby Thomson broke his ankle in March and Aaron hit his way onto the club. One of the people who tried to convince Grimm to give Aaron a shot was Hall of Famer and oft-accused racist Ty Cobb, as noted in a 2017 Deadline Detroit story.
Grimm eventually gave Aaron an opportunity but did his young star no favors in public comments about him. Newsday, Sports Illustrated and Slate all cite Grimm as publicly calling Aaron “Stepin Fetchit,” a name derived from a vaudeville comedian known as “the laziest man in the world.” On his roster Grimm had a player who would become arguably the greatest hitter of all time, and instead of praising or protecting him he fed into racist storylines that Aaron wasn’t as refined, didn’t work as hard or was intellectually inferior to his white teammates.
All of this contrasts greatly to the treatment of one of Aaron’s contemporary stars. Aaron debuted just a few years after Willie Mays had reached the majors with the New York Giants. Mays was the National League’s Rookie of the Year in 1951, then its MVP in 1954 after missing much of the 1952 and 1953 seasons while serving in the military. In his book “Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend,” James S. Hirsch notes the role Giants manager Leo Durocher played in protecting Mays and building his confidence and self-esteem. “In two years,” Durocher said of Mays during his 1951 season, “Mays is going to be the greatest ever to lace on a pair of spiked shoes.”
World Series Champs
Durocher protected Mays to the point of being accused of coddling him, but he got the result he wanted. “All those nice things that Leo says about me make me feel like I wanna go out there and do all those things he says I can do,” Mays said. In Durocher and Mays’ three full seasons together the Giants won two pennants. In 1955, their final year together, Mays led the majors in triples, home runs, and slugging percentage.
Several hundred miles west, meanwhile, Aaron was thriving despite a very different experience. It is perhaps not a surprise that Aaron, already a budding star, won his first batting title the season Grimm was dismissed in 1956 and his lone MVP award in 1957 as the Braves took the next step and won Milwaukee’s only World Series championship.
Over the last few days countless pieces have been written about Aaron and his success overcoming the challenges he faced in his career, with some mistakenly suggesting that he ignored or overlooked the vitriol sent his way for the color of his skin. Aaron did not fail to notice, and he certainly didn’t forget. But he did endure, knowing that at the time it was his only option, and the incredible heights he reached while overcoming those challenges with grace and class allowed him to leave behind a legacy that will be remembered forever.
