RIP Hammerin Hank

I had his poster on my wall. Listened to the the Braves on the radio with Milo Hamilton and Ernie Johnson Sr. doing the Play by Play

@Devil Doc, help me fill in the blanks.

Pitchers-Phil Niekro, Hoyt Wilhelm, ??, ??
Catcher - Joe Torre
1st - Orlando Cepeda
2nd Felix Milan
SS ??
3rd Clete Boyer
RF Hank Aaron
CF Filipe Alou
LF ??
 
cb7893 said:
I had his poster on my wall. Listened to the the Braves on the radio with Milo Hamilton and Ernie Johnson Sr. doing the Play by Play

@Devil Doc, help me fill in the blanks.

Pitchers-Phil Niekro, Hoyt Wilhelm, ??, ?? Ron Reed Milt Pappas
Catcher - Joe Torre
1st - Orlando Cepeda
2nd Felix Milan
SS ?? Sonny Jackson
3rd Clete Boyer
RF Hank Aaron
CF Filipe Alou
LF ?? Rico Carty
Click to expand...
I would run through the lineup in my head growing up so i would never forget them. The 69 Braves had an all star lineup on the bench.

Mike Lum, Darrell Evans, Hank's brother Tommie, Dusty Baker was a great teenage star, Ralph Garr the roadrunner who when got on base the PA system would beep out the Roadrunner cartoon horn.

Nucksie died just a few days ago. What fun it was to watch him work. Ron Reed was also a Detroit Piston. His release from the mound probably looked to the batter like he was 20 feet away instead of 60 feet 6 inches.

There's a bunch more from the late 60s and early 70s when my dad and I would drive the 125 miles to the stadium. Great memories.
 
I remember when he broke the Babe's record. It was big news all around the World. I felt like I was experiencing history.
I always thought it was magnanimous of Henry Aaron to not blame Barry Bonds for using steroids to break his record.
 
I remember when he broke the record...all the hate mail...He started in the ***** Leagues!...that was another time...
 
The games my dad and I attended were at Atlanta-Fulton County stadium which is now a parking lot next to the former Turner Field now owned by Georgia State. This is the wall and fence where Hank’s record breaking dinger landed and the sign marking the spot. It’s in the parking lot where the stadium was.
EF7B94E3-8E67-4279-9698-3ACA546EA260.jpeg
 
One of my favorite baseball trivia questions regards the set of brothers with the most home runs. There were three Boyer brothers that hit 444 hr, and five Delahanty boys, but they played in the dead ball era so they hit very few. The group most people think about is the DiMaggios, three guys that could all hit pretty well and put up 573 HR. But most non-Braves fans don't even know that Tommy Aaron existed, so they miss the Henry (755) plus Tommy (13) which is the correct answer of 768.

(Bonus: The career stolen base mark for brothers is held by Honus (722) and Al (4) Wagner. )
 
StPaulDad said:
One of my favorite baseball trivia questions regards the set of brothers with the most home runs. There were three Boyer brothers that hit 444 hr, and five Delahanty boys, but they played in the dead ball era so they hit very few. The group most people think about is the DiMaggios, three guys that could all hit pretty well and put up 573 HR. But most non-Braves fans don't even know that Tommy Aaron existed, so they miss the Henry (755) plus Tommy (13) which is the correct answer of 768.

(Bonus: The career stolen base mark for brothers is held by Honus (722) and Al (4) Wagner. )
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Father/son home run trivia would be fun.
 
THParent said:
I remember when he broke the Babe's record. It was big news all around the World. I felt like I was experiencing history.
I always thought it was magnanimous of Henry Aaron to not blame Barry Bonds for using steroids to break his record.
Click to expand...
Bonds would’ve hit over 500 and entered the HOF without roids. I wouldn’t be opposed to players using PEDs if they could all use them. If they were legal. On the mound though imagine Nolan Ryan, Bob Gibson, Whitey Ford, or Tom Seaver pitching while on steroids. Or Rivera coming on in the 9th all roided up to shut down the last three batters. It’s not hard to imagine Roger Clemens on steroids. No proof I suppose but plenty of circumstantial evidence. Or direct evidence if one believes the man who claims to have shot him up. He could have also entered the Hall if voters thought he played clean. I remember when he threw his wife under the bus that time. Not cool.

Hank was a good guy and handled losing the record like he played the game.
 
Devil Doc said:
Bonds would’ve hit over 500 and entered the HOF without roids. I wouldn’t be opposed to players using PEDs if they could all use them. If they were legal. On the mound though imagine Nolan Ryan, Bob Gibson, Whitey Ford, or Tom Seaver pitching while on steroids. Or Rivera coming on in the 9th all roided up to shut down the last three batters. It’s not hard to imagine Roger Clemens on steroids. No proof I suppose but plenty of circumstantial evidence. Or direct evidence if one believes the man who claims to have shot him up. He could have also entered the Hall if voters thought he played clean. I remember when he threw his wife under the bus that time. Not cool.

Hank was a good guy and handled losing the record like he played the game.
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I explicitly stay away from the threads here that veer into political territory. But the baseball equivalent? Man I want to jump in!:) But I am older and wiser these days. I will just agree with the Doc above. Bonds was so much better than everyone else he played against that he was clearly one of the top 3 players of all time. When he hit 73 he also walked more than 200 times that season, more than 100 times intentionally. His HR/swing ratio was something like 1:7. When McGwire hit 70 his HR/at bat ratio was 1:8. Bonds didn't miss when he swung the bat
 
I got to briefly meet him at game 1 of the 1999 World Series.
My brother, an ‘82 USNA grad, helped coordinate the Navy fly over for game 1 between the Braves and Yankees. He got some free tickets so I went to the game with him. Not great seats but it was the World Series, so who was I to complain.
My brother takes off after the first inning, then comes back and tells me to come with him, someone has some better seats for me.
He leads me through some security, we get on an elevator, and step out into a VIP suite. My brother whispers to me “Don’t talk unless spoken to and DON’T ask for any autographs.” I don’t really get into that anyway.
This is the MLB VIP suite and inside is every baseball great you can imagine. Over in corner Yogi Berra is regaling the Navy pilots who did the fly over with his WWII stories. Standing around are a bunch of baseball greats including “Hammeren” Hank, who seems quieter than most of the others but is smiling at the “Yogiisms”.
Some guy came up to me and said, “Hey, your brother says your tickets aren’t very good. Here are mine.” It was Mike Schmidt.
 
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UHBlackhawk said:
I got to briefly meet him at game 1 of the 1999 World Series.
My brother, an ‘82 USNA grad, helped coordinate the Navy fly over for game 1 between the Braves and Yankees. He got some free tickets so I went to the game with him. Not great seats but it was the World Series, so who was I to complain.
My brother takes off after the first inning, then comes back and tells me to come with him, someone has some better seats for me.
He leads me through some security, we get on an elevator, and step out into a VIP suite. My brother whispers to me “don’t talk unless spoken to and DON’T ask for any autographs. I don’t really get into that anyway.
Inside is every baseball great you can imagine. Over in corner Yogi Berra is regaling the Navy pilots who did the fly over with his WWII stories. Standing around are a bunch of baseball greats including “Hammeren” Hank, who seems quieter than most of the others but is smiling at the “Yogiisms”.
Some guy came up to me and said, “Hey, your brother says your tickets aren’t very good. Here are mine.” It was Mike Schmidt.
Click to expand...
Man!!!! I have got the wrong brother
 
ALF648 said:
Man!!!! I have got the wrong brother
Click to expand...
My DW is a sports nut and would have loved going but she was 8 months pregnant.
When I got home and told her about all this I couldn’t remember the name of the guy who gave me the tickets. So I say, “Yeah, it was some famous baseball player. Mike something or other, I think he played for the Reds. Schmalz... Smith...”
DW- “Mike Schmidt?”
Me- “Yeah, that’s the guy:”
DW- “Yeah. He played for the Phillies. Putz”
She was so mad that this was wasted on me. Heck, if she had gone they probably would have made her stay in the suite.
 
I’m scheduled to get my fist COVID vaccine this afternoon and feeling all gloomy like I’m being sent to the gallows. The clinic where they are sending us is actually on Gallows Rd. Irony. Anyway, I’m reading articles and tributes to King Henry and found this:

“So it was that Selig was especially torn when Bonds broke his hero’s record, under his commissionership, as baseball was fully embroiled in the steroids scandal. For his part, Aaron stayed clear of the steroids issue, at least as it related to Bonds breaking his record. His friends and teammates, however, spoke for him. In an interview with ESPN’s Howard Bryant in 2009, former Braves outfielder Ralph Garr said: “The one thing Henry hated was cheating. The whole thing bothered him.”
 
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