Hank Aaron
Baseball Player — born 1934
Hank Aaron is a retired American Major League Baseball player, hailed as one of the greatest personalities in the sport.
Hank Aaron was an American Major League Baseball player whose 23-season career produced 755 career home runs — a record that stood as the all-time MLB home-run record for over 30 years until being surpassed by Barry Bonds in August 2007. He was born Henry Louis Aaron on February 5, 1934, in Mobile, Alabama. He grew up in segregated Mobile during the Jim Crow era and started playing semi-professional baseball in the Negro American League with the Indianapolis Clowns in 1952.
He was signed to the Boston Braves organization in 1952 and made his MLB debut with the Milwaukee Braves on April 13, 1954, at age 20. He played 21 seasons with the Braves franchise (Milwaukee 1954–1965, Atlanta 1966–1974) and his final two seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers (1975–1976). His MLB career produced 25 All-Star Game selections, the 1957 World Series championship with Milwaukee (the only Braves World Series title between 1914 and 1995), the 1957 National League Most Valuable Player Award, and his record-breaking April 8, 1974 home run.
The April 8, 1974 home run — Aaron's 715th career home run, breaking Babe Ruth's 39-year-old all-time record — was hit at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium off Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing. The home-run-chase period in 1973 and early 1974 had been extraordinarily difficult for Aaron — he received an estimated 930,000 pieces of mail in 1973, a substantial portion of which contained racist death threats. The post-home-run scene at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium — Aaron rounding the bases as two young white fans ran alongside him — is one of the most-iconic single moments in American baseball history.
Aaron retired after the 1976 season with 755 career home runs (the all-time MLB record until Bonds's 2007 surpassing), 2,297 RBIs (the all-time MLB record, which still stands), and a .305 lifetime batting average. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982 with 97.8% of the vote. He continued to be a substantial American civil-rights and baseball-philanthropic figure for the rest of his life through the Hank Aaron Chasing the Dream Foundation. He died on January 22, 2021, at age 86, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 2022.
His name Hank is the English short form of Henry (from the Old Germanic Heimirich meaning "home ruler"). Hank has been continuously climbing in American naming since the 2010s vintage-revival wave.
About the name Hank
Gender: Male · Origin: English
Nickname For Henry Rules His Household.