The Death of a Hero
Over the weekend I learned that Hank Aaron, one of my great childhood heroes, died. He was my favorite baseball players on my favorite team. He was known for hitting home runs, but it's hard to argue that there has ever been a better all-around player than Hammerin' Hank, although as a boy these nuances didn't play into my calculations. I only knew that he was a man who was doing remarkable things and I wanted to be like him.
I only saw him play one time in person. My family traveled to Atlanta for a game between the Braves and the St. Louis Cardinals sometime during the late 1970's. We were seated in the upper deck above the third base line. I'd brought my glove with me, hoping, expecting, to catch a foul ball, preferably off the bat of Hank Aaron, one of the few true celebrities in my life. I rarely even saw him play on television. They didn't broadcast all the games back then the way they do today. I learned most of what I knew of him by reading about his exploits in the sports pages of the newspaper, our family's subscription to Sports Illustrated, and studying the statistics on the back of his baseball card.
He is the holder of many records, but the one for which he CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: The Death of a Hero