I was born in Atlanta in 1960, and when the Braves moved to town from Milwaukee after the 1965 season, Hank Aaron became my all-seasons hero.
That didn’t seem unusual in my family, because my New Jersey-bred mother and Pennsylvania-raised father considered themselves civil rights foot soldiers. But it was anathema to my white classmates. I’ll never forget a day in spring 1966 when we picked the Braves players we wanted to be for a game of sandlot ball, and I picked Aaron. The other boys chose white players like Joe Torre, Denis Menke and Phil Niekro.
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“It’s sad. But I guess in some ways, you know, you come here, and you have to leave. God doesn’t expect you to stay all the time. It’s tough. I’m at that age now where anything might happen to me. That’s the way life is.” See Full Newspaper Article Here.
