I was thirteen when Hank Aaron hit #715, breaking Babe’s famous home run record. I was rooting for him and rooting hard. I was either too stupid or too distracted to really notice the simple fact that Hank was black and Babe was white- and that that simple fact would scare racists enough to threaten Hank’s life over this event.

I guess if you are stupid enough to be a violent racist then you are stupid enough to be threatened by a guy hitting a ball over a fence. If those anonymous threat senders could have just visited my 7^th grade class at Bearden Junior High they would have seen that it was actually COOL somebody just four hours down the road broke the home run record. Something to celebrate. Something to brag about.

I celebrate it now, 40 years after hearing it happen on the radio. It still sounds amazing. And the hidden voices that tried to silence him into quitting are lost in the faint declining echoes of ignorance.