Hawai'i Sports News: baseball

[6/24/25] Les Murakami, the 89-year-old architect of the University of Hawaii baseball program, today was inducted into the National College Baseball Hall of Fame.

What started as a “temporary” job in 1971, UH’s first season competing in NCAA Division I, turned into a 30-year stint as the Rainbows’ head coach.

Murakami’s record of 1,079-648-4, included six Western Athletic Conference titles, 10 NCAA Regional appearances, and a runner-up finish in the 1980 College World Series.

Murakami coached Sheridan in the AJA League, borrowing their orange, green and white uniforms for his early UH teams. The color scheme stuck, with one of the hues known as “Sheridan orange.”

Murakami developed local talent into stars, such as Gerald Ako, Derek Tatsuno, Greg Oniate, Randy Oyama, Billy Blanchette, Mario Monico, John Matias, while blending with Glenn Braggs, Rick Bass, Chuck Crim, Thad Reese and Bryan Duquette, among several. Murakami sent 74 players to pro baseball, including 10 to the major leagues. Tatsuno referred to Murakami as a “pied piper.”

In acknowledgement of Murakami’s diligence and political pull, then-athletic director Paul Durham was surprised to notice there appeared to be a construction project underway in the quarry where the on-campus athletic facilities were located. That project became UH’s first baseball field, complete with metal bleachers and his wife Dot Murakami’s makeshift concession stand.

In 1984, the field was transformed into an $11.2-million project christened as 4,312-seat Rainbow Stadium.

Murakami coached the Rainbows until he suffered a stroke on Nov. 2, 2000.

In 2001, Murakami was named to the UH Circle of Honor. He also was inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame.

In 2002, UH’s baseball stadium was renamed Les Murakami Stadium. “This has always been the house that Les built,” said Hugh Yoshida, who was the athletic director at the time.

***

[2/22/26] A lone shout from the stands at Les Murakami Stadium came during a lull Friday in the celebration of the facility’s namesake’s induction Opens in a new tab into the College Baseball Hall of Fame.

“LONG OVERDUE!”

Gerald Ako, a soft-spoken man with a sly sense of humor pondered that.Gerald Ako, a soft-spoken man with a sly sense of humor pondered that.

“Yes, I wondered why it took so long,” said Ako, one of Murakami’s first great pitchers. “He must have won a lot of games since 2000.”

That was the year Murakami retired because of a stroke.

For the record, his UH teams went 1,079-570-4 from 1971 to 2000. He led the Rainbows to 10 NCAA Tournament appearances and the 1980 College World Series, where the ‘Bows finished second. They had two chances to beat Arizona once for the championship, but the Wildcats won both.

But everyone at the stadium Friday either knew, or learned very quickly, that Murakami means much more to baseball here than the numbers.

“He turned the program into (Division I),” said Derek Tatsuno, who in 1979 became the first college baseball pitcher to win 20 games, and later was named one of three players of the century by Collegiate Baseball newspaper.

Ako noted that orange is among UH baseball’s team colors because the ’Bows had to use uniforms from Murakami’s successful Sheridan teams that played in Oahu amateur leagues.

“Maybe it’s just his time,” said Tatsuno, a member of the inaugural Hall of Fame class (2006). “As a former inductee, we all get to vote, and I voted for him every year. … I was so happy when he got finally got in.”

The announcement came last summer, but the celebration was held Friday, so Murakami — who turns 90 on June 1 — could receive his blue jacket before a game, from Tatsuno and former Wichita State coach Gene Stephenson, his friend and rival who is also a Hall of Fame member.

More than 50 of Murakami’s players and a long line of fans braved the weather to attend the festivities, and the 2026 ’Bows came through with a 4-2 win over the Shockers.

Friday, December 27, 2024

R.I.P. 2024

12/27/24 - Greg Gumbel

12/20/24 - Ricky Henderson

12/11/24 - Rocky Colavito

12/6/24 - Bill Melton

12/1/24 - Lou Carnesecca

11/25/24 - Rico Carty

11/19/24 - Bob Love

11/12/24 - Gerry Faust

11/11/24 - John Robinson

11/3/24 - Dub Jones

10/22/24 - Fernando Valenzuela

10/8/24 - Luis Tiant

10/5/24 - Greg Landry

10/4/24 - Billy Shaw

9/30/24 - Pete Rose

9/30/24 - Dikembe Mutombo

9/21/24 - Mercury Morris

8/21/24 - Al Attles

8/10/24 - Kevin Sullivan

8/9/24 - Chi Chi Rodriguez

8/7/24 - Duane Thomas

7/16/24 - Joe 'Jellybean' Bryant

6/28/24 - Orlando Cepeda

6/25/24 - Sika Anoa'i

6/18/24 - Willie Mays

6/12/24 - Jerry West

6/9/24 - Frank Arnold

6/9/24 - Chet Walker

6/3/24 - Larry Allen

5/29/24 - Kent Kafentzis

5/27/24 - Bill Walton

5/20/24 - Jim Otto

4/20/24 - Roman Gabriel

4/16/24 - Whitey Herzog

4/11/24 - OJ Simpson (Reardon)

4/11/24 - Chad Rowan (Akebono)

3/26/24 - Jim Loomis

3/3/24 - Chris Mortensen

2/26/24 - Golden Richards

Monday, December 23, 2024

MLB 2024

12/23/24 - Ohtani wins AP male athlete of the year for the third time

12/9/24 - Dick Allen and Dave Parker elected to Hall of Fame by Veterans Committee

11/22/24 - Judge and Ohtani are unanimous MVPs

11/21/24 - Chris Sale and Tarik Skubal win Cy Young Awards

10/30/24 - Dodgers down 0-5, come back to beat the Yankees 7-6 to win World Series

10/25/24 - World Series game 1: Freddie Freeman walk-off grandslam

9/19/23 - Shohei goes 50-50, went 6-6 with three homers, two doubles, two steals, four runs scored, and 10 RBIs

3/19/24 - Blake Snell sign with Giants for two years, $62 million

12/9/23 - Shohei Otani signs with Dodgers for 10 years, $700 million

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Josh Gibson eclipses Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth

Negro Leagues statistics will become part of MLB history today, with more than 2,300 players from the seven iterations of the Negro Leagues (1920-1948) being officially added to the record books.

What this means: Negro League legends, unfamiliar to many modern fans, will now be listed among all-time leaders, while Negro League players who played in MLB — including Willie Mays, Minnie Miñoso and Larry Doby — will have their stats integrated and updated.

The man, the myth, the legend: Negro Leagues icon and Baseball Hall of Famer Josh Gibson is now the all-time leader in batting average (.372, eclipsing Ty Cobb), slugging percentage (.718, eclipsing Babe Ruth) and OPS (1.177, eclipsing Ruth). Gibson, who played 17 years with the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, also holds the single-season record in all three categories: .466 BA, .974 SLG and 1.474 OPS.

"He was referred to as the black Babe Ruth, but some believe it might be just as accurate to call the Bambino the white Josh Gibson," wrote Bill Johnson of the Society for American Baseball Research.

Thursday, December 14, 2023

R.I.P. 2023

12/14/23 - George McGinnis

11/1/23 - Bob Knight

10/5/23 - Dick Butkus, Chicago Bears

10/4/23 - Bob Wagner

10/2/23 - Russ Francis

10/1/23 - Tim Wakefield

9/26/23 - Brooks Robinson

9/6/23 - Adnan Al-Kaissy (Chief Billy White Wolf)

9/4/23 - Eric Kadooka

8/24/23 - Bray Wyatt

8/23/23 - Terry Funk

7/25/23 - Johnny Lujack

7/9/23 - Gary Allen

6/17/23 - Bob Brown

6/14/23 - Homer Jones

6/14/23 - Jim Yagi

6/7/23 - Alex Kaloi

6/7/23 - The Iron Shiek

5/19/23 - Jim Brown

5/18/23 - Superstar Billy Graham

5/9/23 - Denny Crum

5/9/23 - Joe Kapp

5/7/23 - Vida Blue

3/31/23 - John Brockington

3/21/23 - Willis Reed

3/11/23 - Bud Grant

2/27/23 - Gaylord Carreira

2/16/23 - Tim McCarver

2/15/23 - Greg McMackin

1/30/23 - Jim Leahey

1/26/23 - Billy Packer

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

MLB 2023

12/21/22 - Wait, Carlos Correa signs with the Mets for $315 million, 12 years

12/14/22 - Carlos Correa signs with Giants for $350 million, 13 years

12/8/22 - Padres sign Xander Bogaerts (from Red Sox) to $280 million, 11 years

12/7/22 - Aaron Judge to return to Yankees for $360 million, 9 years

Tuesday, October 04, 2022

Aaron Judge hits no. 62

The American League has a new single-season home run king.

New York Yankees star Aaron Judge launched his 62nd home run of the season Tuesday on the road against the Texas Rangers, breaking the AL's record he shared with Roger Maris.

After depositing a Tim Mayza sinker into the Toronto Blue Jays bullpen to tie Maris' mark last Wednesday, Judge went without a home run during the Yankees' final regular season homestand -- a three-game series against the Baltimore Orioles. Back on the road, Judge who had gone 2 for 9 with two singles in two games against the Rangers through Game 1 of Tuesday's doubleheader, took Texas pitcher Jesus Tinoco deep in the first inning of the nightcap to reach No. 62.

The Yankees gathered to meet Judge at home plate after the home run, and he took off his helmet as he walked back to the dugout to acknowledge the fans. When he took the field in the bottom of the inning, he was again given a standing ovation.

"It would have been nice to hit it at home in front of the home fans, but at the end of the day, I've got a job to do," Judge said Sunday.

The record-setting homer came three days after the 61st anniversary of the day Maris passed the legendary Babe Ruth with his 61st home run.

"(It is an) honor to be given a chance to be associated with Maris," Judge said Wednesday after he became forever linked to the Yankees legend as the only players in franchise history to hit 61 home runs. "I can't even describe it. It's such an honor to know what Maris did in this game. To get a chance to tie Roger Maris, that's stuff you dream about."

Only Barry Bonds (73), Mark McGwire (70, 65) and Sammy Sosa (66, 64, 63) are ahead of Judge on MLB's single-season home run list. But while Judge holds the AL record, Maris' son, Roger Maris Jr., said this week that he believes Judge should be recognized as the true "home run king."

Maris' mark stood as the all-time MLB record up until McGwire passed it by hitting 70 in 1998. Bonds surpassed McGwire in 2001, with baseball's official single-season record of 73 home runs. But Maris Jr. diminished the accomplishments of the two sluggers, who reached their feats during the so-called steroid era.

"He plays the game the right way," Maris Jr. said of Judge earlier this week. "And I think it gives people the chance to look at somebody who should be revered for hitting 62 home runs, and not just a guy who hit it in the American League, but for being the actual single-season home run champion. That's who he is. It's 62, and I think that's what needs to happen."

Judge, who grew up about half an hour east of San Francisco as a Giants fan, has said that he believes that Bonds' 73 homers is the rightful single-season mark.

New York manager Aaron Boone said he feels privileged to have had a front-row seat to baseball history.

"The history of this game is one of the is one of its calling cards," Boone said. "The Number 61. I've known about that number for my entire life. I think one thing that makes our sport a little more special than the others, is the history of it all. We do history really well. And this has been a year and a season where we're in the middle of one of those magical historical moments, and that's tied to a number. And that's pretty neat."

Saturday, August 20, 2022

a chat with Les Murakami

If you have a story to tell, I’m all ears.

That’s what I enjoy, listening to stories — even if they’re exaggerated.

Long-time fellow staffer Stephen Tsai tells good stories, especially about former colleagues. Legendary journalist Jim Becker experienced unbelievable exploits and he wrote a book about it.

So in my search for a good conversation, I figured that since it’s nearing father’s day I’d chat with Les Murakami, whom I consider the father and godfather of University of Hawaii baseball.

The younger generation only knows that the Manoa campus stadium is named after him. But little do they know that he built a program from ground zero, maybe below that. When he took the job in 1971, he had no field to practice or play (UH played games at Ala Wai), tattered uniforms (the reason he used jerseys from his Sheridan baseball franchise) and was only given $500 to start up the program. If not for the work of Les, his family, friends and host of volunteers, there wouldn’t be a program, a College World Series berth, 11 NCAA appearances and two iterations of stadiums (an aluminum-seated facility and the current one now).

Friday’s casual interview at the Murakami home morphed into an oftentimes amusing round table exchange among Les, his wife Dot, and gregarious Brian Kitaoka, Les’ health aide for the past four years.

Les, 86, is doing well, maintains a sharp mind and a vivid memory and is as blunt as ever.

Three years ago, Les was diagnosed with cancer of the rectum. It’s something not widely known but the Murakamis are OK talking about.

“The doctor’s telling me this place here is cancer(ous) and she tells me, ‘Hey, you better listen.’ I tell her, ‘Why should I listen, I know what I got.’ ” Les said. “Not gonna change.”

“I look at it this way, if the Lord wants to take me, ‘Go ahead.’ ” Les added.

“He went through three cycles of chemo and he never lost a hair,” Brian said.

“He’s amazing because he had this major stroke (in 2000),” Dot said. “He’s really a survivor.”

Les is still ambulatory and walks short distances with a cane.

“Thank goodness for Brian because Brian takes him out all over,” Dot said. “Brian stretches him, and he does take walks. He goes to PT (once a week). … Before that he was doing water therapy but he stopped when he got his cancer.

“He’s good, you know, but hey, with somebody who has half a brain (portion of it was removed because of the stroke) and had cancer and still can talk, talk, talk and his memory is still good.”

And the banter between Les and Brian usually starts with an insult and ends with a laugh.

One day they were driving past Queen Ka’ahumanu Elementary along Pensacola Street and Les tells Brian, “I went there … I’m not high-class, you know.” Said Brian: “I realized that the first day I worked for you.”

That was just the beginning of a lively session and Les was very obliging to tell his stories:

Kolohe from the start

“I used to go to Koloa Elementary School (on Kauai) but I was too young they said, so I couldn’t go first grade and I used to get really mad. Hell, I was one of the smartest guys, how come I cannot go first grade when the other guys going first grade?” Les said.

“My mother checked Lawai (School and) I could go first grade … so I’m in the classroom, I got the boys and we’re all playing in the room, the teacher said if you don’t want to listen, get out there and play, go in the yard. So I told all the guys, OK, let’s go, and went and we played softball.”

Added Dot: “When I went to a funeral the first grade teacher was still there, and she told my son Rob, I hope you’re not like your father, because your father gave me such a bad time.”

The franchise and the chatterbox

Les credited Derek Tatsuno as being the most important player in the program’s history. “Before I had Derek, I used to draw 100 to 200 people, and then when Derek came, it was standing room only.”

But Les acknowledged, his favorite player was someone else.

“Gotta be Ron Nomura. Because the guy is just like another coach of the field.

“He’s the only guy I know that can talk to the player, who can do all the talking and yet his mind is still (in the game). He moves people around like a coach. He’s not a 100 percent great player but he’s a player that’s a coach. Amazing.

“We were playing — I’m not sure if it was New Mexcio or Santa Clara — all of a sudden the coach comes out and calls time, and he comes to talk to me. He tell me, ‘you gotta tell your catcher to shut up.’

“I tell him, ‘You show me in the rule book where it says catcher cannot talk?’ You know what he tells me? He tells me your catcher’s ‘different.’ ‘What do you mean different? You can do the same thing, get your catcher to talk.’ He tells me, nobody can talk like yours.”

1980, most talented team

“Oh yeah. That was the most talented team. That’s why we went far (College World Series). My teams usually we don’t have power. But that 1980 team, we had some power. I had probably the most powerful player I’ve ever had. Good hitter. He could hit the long ball. That was (5-foot-5 slugger from Waipahu) Greg Oniate.”

Les remember going to Austin, Texas, for the regionals.

“We’re playing Pan American the first game and we come off the bus. It’s about 90-something degrees. All those players from Pan American are in the swimming pool and they’re yelling at us, Oh, (Alan) Maria is waiting for you guys. He was their ace pitcher from Waipahu. We coming off the bus and Oniate is behind me. He says, ‘What you talking about, he’s waiting for us, I’m waiting for him.’ We hit that guy in batting practice every day. Coach, don’t worry, we going get him.”

UH beat Pan American 8-4 and the Rainbows tagged Maria for 15 hits over six innings.

The rival coach

The late San Diego State coach Jim Dietz. who passed away this past March at age 83, was a rival who always tried to get an advantage. He would ask opposing coaches if they were starting a right-hander or left-hander. Dietz then would return the favor and tell him what he was throwing.

“So the first inning, he brings in his left-hander. In the second inning he brings in a right-hander,” Les said.

But Les recalled when that tactic backfired when SDSU played USC, a day before the Aztecs were scheduled to play UH.

With Les, Nomura and Carl Furutani scouting in the stands, Dietz pulled the same pitching ploy.

“Right after that, USC started going after San Diego State, (you) hear the guys … arguing back and forth, yelling at each other. (When) the game (was) over, you think the guys are going to shake hands, they come over to shake hands, (then) Pow, pow, pow, the guys they fighting. The two sides, they get bust up.”

Afterward Deitz sees Les in the stands, approaches him and says, “I don’t think we can play tomorrow. So I said, ‘What do you mean you cannot play, the game is scheduled.’ He tell me, yeah, but they’re going to be big rain tonight, there’s going to get one storm tonight, I don’t think the field’s going to be ready.”

The next day around noon, Les goes to check the field and sees (radio broadcaster) Don Robbs and (UH sports information director) Eddie Inouye. “Nothing wrong with the field they tell me. Everything look OK,” Les said.

“So I was go home, come back about 3 o’clock thinking we going to play, right?

“And here’s frickin’ Deitz with hose pipe, shooting water at home plate. I watch him pretty soon the darn thing becomes flooded. Then Deitz disappears. When he comes back, he has two frickin’ ducks and he puts them in the pool. I’m not kidding you. He had the SID over there. He told the SID take the picture and send it to Advertiser and Star-Bulletin.”

Rich Hill and Jocelyn Alo

“I thought he did a fantastic job, I know he only got so much talent,” Les said of first-year UH coach Rich HillWhat do you think of Alo?

“Wow. Most amazing Wahine I’ve seen.”

Give some respect

“They only see what he is today, but they don’t see the effort and hard work and sacrifices that went in to making this program what it is today,” Brian said. “I don’t think the public really knows the sacrifice and the determination he had in developing this baseball program. They look at it, they got a stadium named after him but behind that, a lot of sacrifices and a lot of efforts were put on him and Dot to move this program forward.”

Dot: “Actually our friends, boy did they come through for us.”

“One person who should be recognized and should have a plaque is Charles Ushijima. He was the one that believed in him.”

”Charlie was a legislature,” Les said. “And he helped me and he became the booster group president. He helped us so much.”

“One thing I’m most proud of, is that I don’t know he does it, but he has so many people that’s willing to work, and he’s doing nothing,” said Dot, Les’ wife for 58 years. “He would ask people and they’d work hard. He had big dreams.”

***

5/25/26 - more stories from Les Murakami

Wednesday, August 03, 2022

Vin Scully

Vin Scully, the gentlemanly, yarn-spinning play-by-play man whose mellifluous voice provided the soundtrack to Dodger baseball from Brooklyn to Los Angeles for a jaw-dropping 67 seasons, has died. He was 94.

Scully, a member of the Dodgers organization from 1950 until his retirement following the 2016 regular season, died Tuesday at his home in Hidden Hills, the Dodgers announced.

When he bid farewell to the broadcast booth, he had called nearly half of the games for a franchise that was born in 1890.

Always even-tempered and an easy listen, Scully was credited with turning Los Angeles into a “transistor town” — his broadcasts were pumped throughout the L.A. Coliseum (the team’s first home out west) and then Dodger Stadium and wafted from traffic jams and street-side venues throughout the sprawling city.

“When a game is on the air, the physical presence of his voice is overwhelming,” wrote Robert Creamer for a 1964 Sports Illustrated profile of Scully titled, “The Transistor Kid.”

“His pleasantly nasal baritone comes out of radios on the back counters of orange juice stands, from transistors held by people sitting under trees, in barber shops and bars, and from cars everywhere — parked cars, cars waiting for red lights to turn green, cars passing you at 65 on the freeways, cars edging along next to you in rush-hour traffic jams.”

It was such a shame that because many distributors refused to carry Time Warner Cable’s Dodgers channel in a cost dispute, most TV viewers in L.A. were unable to hear the great Scully at work for several years.

Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, Scully also called MLB games for NBC starting in 1983. (He received a Peabody Award that year.) On the network’s Game of the Week, he was partnered with Joe Garagiola.

Earlier, Scully did The Masters and other golf tournaments as well as tennis and NFL contests for CBS. It was Scully who did the play-by-play on the NFC championship game in January 1982 in which the 49ers’ Joe Montana threw a last-minute touchdown pass to Dwight Clark to stun the Dallas Cowboys.

Through all that, Scully continued to serve as the voice of the Dodgers.

“His timing is impeccable,” Dodgers broadcaster Rick Monday told Sports Illustrated in May 2016. “He’s never in a rush. It’s like the game waits for him. We have a little joke among us. When Vin starts one of his stories, the batter is going to hit three foul balls in a row, and he’ll have plenty of time to get it in. When the rest of us starts one, the next is a ground-ball double play to end the inning.”

In 2010, the American Sportscasters Association named him the greatest sportscaster of the 20th century.

Scully was smooth and cool and made it sound easy. He didn’t talk too much or hyperventilate for the home team. When the Dodgers won the 1959 National League pennant, his line was vintage: “We go to Chicago.” That was one of the few times he ever referred to the Dodgers as “we.”

Scully’s honey-soaked voice was an instrument, his pace varied, from rat-a-tat to complete silence, allowing the crowd and background noise to fill things in. He left the microphone for two minutes during the roar that followed Hank Aaron’s record-setting 715th home run in 1974.

For Kirk Gibson’s dramatic ninth-inning blow in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series that would propel the Dodgers to the title, Scully said: “She is gone! In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.”

“Mine, I guess, is no style at all. I’m just myself, coming to chat with the audience,” he once said.

When Bill Buckner of the Red Sox allowed a grounder to slip between his legs in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, capping a crazy comeback by the New York Mets, Scully said:

“A little roller up along first … behind the bag … it gets through Buckner! Here comes [Ray] Knight, and the Mets win it!”

Another one of Scully’s more memorable calls came when he “time-stamped” Sandy Koufax’s fourth career no-hitter, this one a perfect game. “The time on the scoreboard is 9:44,” he told his radio listeners. “The date, September the 9th, 1965.”

He described the scene at Dodger Stadium: “There’s 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies.”

“More than a half-century later, it still raises goosebumps,” Bob Costas recalled in his Hall of Fame acceptance speech in July 2018. “The building of the drama and anticipation, the meticulous attention to detail, the keen eye of a reporter blended with the graceful rose of a poet. A perfect performance on the mound matched, and enhanced, by a perfect performance in the booth.”

Scully’s skill was particularly evident in the tedious games that invariably came up. His forte was his storytelling. He mixed in vivid and thoughtful digressions that kept fans glued to his words, as likely to embark on an architectural review of a ballpark, literary or historical references or other engaging info. He brought out the color and life of the game beyond the lines.

Away from the field, Scully was heard on TV shows like Mister Ed, Highway to Heaven, Brooklyn Bridge and The X-Files (Gillian Anderson’s character is named for him) and in the 1962 Glenn Ford film Experiment in Terror. He even hosted a game show (It Takes Two) and his own afternoon TV talk show.

His wife of 47 years, Sandi, died in January 2021. Survivors include his children, Kevin, Todd, Erin, Kelly and Catherine; 21 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

“We have lost an icon,” Dodgers president & CEO Stan Kasten said in a statement. “The Dodgers’ Vin Scully was one of the greatest voices in all of sports. He was a giant of a man, not only as a broadcaster, but as a humanitarian. He loved people. He loved life. He loved baseball and the Dodgers. And he loved his family. His voice will always be heard and etched in all of our minds forever. I know he was looking forward to joining the love of his life, Sandi. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family during this very difficult time. Vin will be truly missed.”

Vincent Edward Scully was born in The Bronx on Nov. 29, 1927. His father, a traveling salesman, died when he was 4, and he grew up in an apartment in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. His love for sportscasting was fueled when he crawled underneath the family’s wooden radio console to absorb the roar of the crowd during game broadcasts.

At Fordham University, he worked on the school’s paper, ran the radio station, wrote as a stringer for The New York Times and was a poor-hitting outfielder on the baseball team. He also sang in a quartet called The Shaving Mugs.

Scully served two years in the U.S. Navy before graduating from Fordham in 1949. He began his professional broadcasting career as a staff announcer at radio station WTOP in Washington, where a CBS executive noticed him and took him to see Red Barber, the network’s No. 1 sportscaster.

When CBS needed someone in an emergency to work the Boston University-Maryland football game at Fenway Park, Barber called Scully. Later, Barber suggested to Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, that Scully would make a good addition to the booth at Ebbets Field, and Scully was hired in 1950 at $5,000 a year.

Naive and good-natured, Scully failed to file travel expense reports, and the earnest announcer nearly went broke the first year.

He had replaced Ernie Harwell (who had left to join the New York Giants) on the Dodgers broadcasts, the No. 3 man behind Barber and Connie Desmond. Then Desmond departed and Scully moved up a notch. By the beginning of the 1954 season, Barber had jumped to the New York Yankees and the Dodgers had themselves a new golden throat, 26-year-old Scully.

With the Yankees in town on July 31, 2013, Scully reminisced on the air about the memorable home runs he had witnessed: Bobby Thomson’s shocking sudden-death game-winner that sent the Giants past Brooklyn and into the 1951 World Series; Aaron’s shot that moved him past Babe Ruth; and Gibson’s unthinkable blast.

Scully had another, less-known one — from Game 4 of the 1963 World Series, with the Dodgers one win away from sweeping their bitter rivals — that revealed the humility that marked the man and his career.

Scully talked about how the Yankees’ Mel Allen, another legendary play-by-play man, had been suffering from severe laryngitis. Doctors told him to stay subdued, and Allen remained in control through three games of the Series, broadcast by NBC (Scully also was working for the network).

But when Mickey Mantle of the Yankees homered off Koufax to tie the score 1-1 in the seventh, “Everything went for broke,” said Scully, who had worked the first half of the game before stepping aside. “Forget about the caution with his voice. Allen gave a great call, but it was too long and too hard for his throat, and he just came apart.

“Mel tried to speak, but nothing would really come out. I was supposed to go down to the clubhouse if the Yankees lost to do the Dodgers celebration. However, [NBC Sports head Tom] Gallery tapped Mel on the shoulder as if to say, ‘Give the microphone to Vin.’ And I felt horrible; my heart was broken for Mel.”

Scully called the end of the game, won by the Dodgers. Allen was fired the next season and never called another World Series.

“Here was Mel on the world stage, this great moment … that was a valuable lesson for me,” Scully said. “There but for the grace of God go I. It could happen to me anytime, anywhere.”

Nothing like that ever happened to Scully, and he bowed out on his own terms at San Francisco’s AT&T Park on Oct. 2, 2016. As Giants reliever Sergio Romo was retiring the Dodgers’ Rob Segedin for the final out, he said:

“It’s a good line, and it’s one certainly I’ve been holding on to for I think most of the year … The line is, don’t be sad that it’s over, smile because it happened. And that’s really the way I feel for the remarkable opportunity I was given and was allowed to keep for all these years.

“I have said enough for a lifetime. And for the last time, I wish you all a very pleasant good afternoon.”

Wednesday, July 20, 2022

Jocelyn Alo

7/20/22 - Jocelyn Alo wins ESPY award for best college athelete

7/6/22 - Jocelyn Alo hopes to elevate her sport

6/14/22 - Alo signs with WPF

6/10/22 - Alo closes college career with repeat national championship

6/9/22 - Alo homers twice as Oklahoma takes first game of College World Series

6/8/22 - Alo's wrestling video won over Patty Grasso

6/7/22 - Alo leads Oklahoma into College World Series finals

3/12/22 - Jocelyn Alo sets NCAA home run record against Hawaii

5/31/18 - Jocelyn Alo named All-American
3/28/18 - Jocelyn Alo is making a huge impact at Oklahoma
6/11/17 - Jocelyn Alo and Dani Cervantes top All-State team
2/18/17 - Jocelyn Alo is in a league of her own

Thursday, April 07, 2022

MLB approves electronic signaling

In a move that ends a tradition dating more than 150 years, Major League Baseball approved the use of an electronic device for catchers to signal pitches in an effort to eliminate sign stealing and speed games.

Since the beginning of baseball in the 19th century, catchers had used their fingers to signal the type of pitch and its intended location.

As video at balllparks increased in the 21st century, so did sign stealing — and worries about how teams were trying to swipe signals. The Houston Astros were penalized for using a camera and banging a trash can to alert their batters to pitch types during their run to the 2017 World Series title.

“It basically eliminates all need to create a sign system, for a catcher giving signs,” MLB chief operations and strategy officer Chris Marinak said Tuesday. “You literally just press a button and it delivers the pitch call to the pitcher. And what we’ve seen so far, it really improves pace of game.”

Some teams tried the system in spring training, with manager Tony La Russa of the Chicago White Sox and Aaron Boone of the New York Yankees among those saying they liked what they saw.

Sunday, March 20, 2022

designated hitter comes to the National League

PHOENIX – It was an impressive holdout for the National League, which made it nearly 50 years staving off a full-time designated hitter rule that the American League implemented before the 1973 season.

“We’ll continue to play by baseball rules,” NL President Chub Feeney famously said back then.

Well, the rules have finally changed.

Among the most noticeable switches in MLB for the 2022 season will be that all 30 teams will use the designated hitter, eliminating pitchers hitting and changing one of the long-standing different quirks between the two leagues.

No more Madison Bumgarner taking meaty cuts, no more Max Scherzer trying to end last year’s 0-for-62 slump.

The extra hitter won’t be a completely new concept in the NL: The league used the DH in the coronavirus-shortened season in 2020, in interleague games when visiting AL parks and in the postseason. There’s also the reality that nearly every level of baseball – from high school to college to the minor leagues – usually uses the DH.

But the change is still substantial, and it means some parts of the game will almost certainly become endangered or vanish – think sacrifice bunting, double switches and a Bartolo Colon blast. On the positive side, it also could add a jolt of offense to a game that needs it. MLB teams combined for a .244 batting average last season, which was the sport’s lowest mark since 1972 — pitchers didn’t help, combining to barely hit over .100.

There are certainly some pitchers upset that they don’t get to swing the bat. Zack Greinke produced two singles in last year’s World Series, including one as a pinch-hitter for Houston.

But Diamondbacks infielder Josh Rojas said he didn’t expect the change to be a big adjustment.

“I do think it’ll help with run production on the National League side,” Rojas said. “Having that pitcher in the nine-hole kind of cut off some rallies sometimes, or having to bunt him over instead of swinging it. … I don’t mind the DH.”

The DH position could also provide more jobs for the sport’s 30-somethings, who might not be as fleet in the field but can still swing the bat at a high level.

Friday, November 19, 2021

Shohei Ohtani MVP

Shohei Ohtani, coming off a largely unprecedented 2021 season, was crowned the American League's Most Valuable Player unanimously on Thursday night, cementing the two-way superstar as a global sensation.

Later in Japan, the Tokyo Tower was scheduled to be lit up in Los Angeles Angels colors to celebrate Ohtani becoming the 19th unanimous MVP in major league history. Earlier, Major League Baseball ran a global spot centered on Ohtani in four languages, representing the latest in a string of efforts to market him all over the world.

How did Ohtani plan to celebrate?

"I don't have any special plans, actually," Ohtani, speaking through his interpreter, said a little after 10 a.m. local time from his home in Japan. "I'm probably gonna spend a lonely night by myself at home."

Ohtani, charmingly ordinary amid extraordinary accomplishment, claimed all 30 first-place votes from the Baseball Writers' Association of America and became the fifth unanimous MVP since 2000, joining Mike Trout (2014), Albert Pujols (2009), Barry Bonds (2002) and Bryce Harper, who won unanimously in 2015 and was named the National League MVP on Thursday.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the young star for the Toronto Blue Jays, captured 29 of the 30 second-place votes by the BBWAA, with the remaining vote going to Salvador Perez of the Kansas City Royals. Guerrero's teammate Marcus Semien received 24 third-place votes.

The 2021 season saw Ohtani fulfill his promise as a two-way star and somehow exceed the outsized expectations he carried with him from Japan four years earlier.

The MVP was his crowning achievement.

"I've always dealt with a lot of doubters, especially from my days in Japan," Ohtani said. "But I try not to let that get to me. I just wanted to have fun and see what kind of numbers I could put up."

Ohtani became the first player in baseball history to hit at least 30 home runs in a year when he also made at least 10 pitching appearances -- and that doesn't come close to capturing his wide-ranging excellence.

Ohtani, 27, amassed 46 home runs and made 23 starts for an otherwise lowly Angels team. Offensively, he posted a .965 OPS (second highest in the AL), added eight triples (tied for the major league lead) and stole 26 bases (a mark topped by only seven players). He became the sixth player in history with at least 45 homers and at least 25 stolen bases in the same season, joining a decorated list of names that includes Alfonso Soriano, Chipper Jones, Jose Canseco, Larry Walker and Bonds.

None of the others, of course, actually pitched.

Ohtani also compiled 130 1/3 innings on the mound, and boasted a 3.18 ERA with 156 strikeouts and 44 walks. Among those with at least 120 innings in 2021, Ohtani ranked within the top 14% in strikeout percentage, the top 19% in opponents' slugging percentage and the top 16% in expected fielding independent pitching. All told, Ohtani was worth 9.1 Baseball-Reference wins above replacement, far more than anybody else in the sport.

"Shohei's season was nothing short of electric," Trout wrote in a statement. "At times, I felt like I was back in Little League. To watch a player throw eight innings, hit a home run, steal a base and then go play right field was incredible. What impresses me the most about him, though, is the way he carries himself both on and off the field. With so much on his plate daily, he still manages to do it with a smile."

Ohtani, who gave up a promising career in Japan early to become a two-way player at his sport's highest level, showed glimpses of his potential early in his first season in the United States. Through his first two months of 2018, he posted a 3.18 ERA on the mound and a .929 OPS in the batter's box. But he suffered a sprain of his ulnar collateral ligament in his first June start and made only one more pitching appearance the rest of the year.

Tommy John surgery was recommended in late September, prompting Ohtani to spend most of the next 15 months rehabbing his right elbow. Ohtani proved to be a formidable offensive weapon in the meantime -- batting .286/.351/.532 with 40 home runs in a combined 210 games from 2018 to 2019 -- but shouldered widespread doubt over whether he could become baseball's first two-way star since a young Babe Ruth briefly juggled hitting and pitching in the early 1900s.

The COVID-19-shortened 2020 season only exacerbated concerns. Ohtani posted a .190 batting average and made only two pitching starts -- allowing seven runs and recording only five outs -- before being shut down from throwing once again with a flexor strain.

An aggressive offseason followed. Ohtani altered his diet, sought counsel from third-party facilities, got into more game-like situations as both a pitcher and a hitter and showed up to spring training in 2021 looking like a completely different player. His fastballs breezed into the upper 90s, his batted balls frequently cleared the center-field batter's eye, and in the midst of that, Angels manager Joe Maddon decided to let Ohtani dictate the terms of his season. He lifted prior restrictions, allowing Ohtani to hit the day before, the day after and, most notably, the day of his starts. On some nights, he even moved Ohtani from the mound and into the outfield in order to keep his bat in the lineup.

In July, Ohtani competed in the Home Run Derby, then led off the All-Star Game as both a pitcher and a hitter. In October, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred gifted him with the Commissioner's Historic Achievement Award meant to "recognize accomplishments and contributions of historical significance to the game," according to an MLB release. Throughout, Ohtani captivated audiences with his unprecedented combination of power, speed and pitching prowess. His fastball was electric, but his splitter was devastating. He hit 500-foot moon shots, but he also legged out routine grounders.

Fans lined up outside the Angel Stadium gates for his giveaways, people all over the world tuned in on his start days and the most respected members of his sport -- players, coaches, executives -- were left stunned by his overwhelming talent.

Now, rightfully, he is the MVP.

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Cleveland Indians will become the Guardians

The conflict over the Guardians name in Cleveland has come to an end.

The Cleveland Guardians baseball team and the Cleveland Guardians roller derby team released a joint statement on Tuesday morning, announcing they will share the same name going forward.

“The Cleveland Guardians Baseball Company, LLC and Guardians Roller Derby are pleased to announce an amicable resolution of the lawsuit filed by Guardians Roller Derby, whereby both organizations will continue to use the Guardians name."

The Guardians — previously known as the Indians — announced the name change in July, which would go into effect for the 2022 baseball season.

Saturday, March 06, 2021

Memories of 70's baseball

The affection engulfs Clint Hurdle's voice as he appraises the list of those recently gone — childhood idols who became teammates and opponents, teammates and opponents who became acquaintances, acquaintances who became dear friends.

The 1970s memories surface fast for the man who has spent his entire adult life in baseball, as player and manager. Bob Watson, whom he first met while serving as a batboy for the Class A Cocoa Astros. Claudell Washington: "We used to just laugh." Bob Gibson, as nice off the field as he was menacing on it. Lindy McDaniel's big windup. The distinctive way Joe Morgan pumped his elbow at bat: "I watched him as a kid. I used to try to re-create the chicken wing for hitting."

All are members of a list disquieting in its length — those from the ranks of 1970s baseball rosters who have died in the past year alone.

The list: Perhaps it's no longer than any other list of those who were dying at other moments in baseball's history. But against the past year's backdrop — of pandemic-inflected grief, of baseball withering and coming back smaller, of a truncated season and crowdless stands — it feels unremitting. Just part of it:

Watson.

Washington.

Gibson.

McDaniel.

Morgan.

Al Kaline.

Lou Brock.

Don Sutton.

Hank Aaron.

Dick Allen.

Jay Johnstone.

Phil Niekro.

Tom Seaver.

Biff Pocoroba.

Billy Conigliaro.

Tommy Lasorda. And now, three weeks ago, from COVID-19 complications: Grant Jackson, who won the final Major League Baseball game of the decade as the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates took the World Series.

Theirs were the names etched on the Topps cards. The names that crackled from plastic, fruit-colored transistor radios. The names that shouted from the pages of Baseball Digest and hometown newspapers at a moment in the game's history that can seem like yesterday but, propelled by the past year's losses, is starting its inexorable fade.

"Every one of these guys, there's a memory," said Hurdle, now 63. "We all learn lessons different ways. And the one I keep learning — it seems like every week now — is take nothing for granted."

Friday, January 22, 2021

Hank Aaron

Hank Aaron, who faced down racism as he eclipsed Babe Ruth as baseball’s home run king, hitting 755 homers and holding the most celebrated record in sports for more than 30 years, has died. He was 86.

The Atlanta Braves, his team for many years, confirmed the death on Friday in a message from its chairman, Terry McGuirk. No other details were provided.

[photo] Hank Aaron was among the greatest all-around players in baseball history, earning his home run record in the face of hate mail and even death threats.Credit...Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, via Getty Images By Richard Goldstein

Playing for 23 seasons, all but his final two years with the Braves in Milwaukee and then Atlanta, Aaron was among the greatest all-around players in baseball history and one of the last major league stars to have played in the Negro leagues.

But his pursuit of Ruth’s record of 714 home runs proved a deeply troubling affair beyond the pressures of the ball field. When he hit his 715th home run, on the evening of April 8, 1974, against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, he prevailed in the face of hate mail and even death threats spewing outrage that a Black man could supplant a white baseball icon.

Aaron was routinely brilliant, performing with seemingly effortless grace, but he had little flash, notwithstanding his nickname in the sports pages, Hammerin’ Hank. He long felt that he had not been accorded the recognition he deserved.

He played for teams far beyond the news media centers of New York and the West Coast, and his Braves won only two pennants and a single World Series championship, those coming long before he approached Ruth’s record.

Aaron did not enjoy the idolatry accorded the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle or match the exuberance and electric presence of the Giants’ Willie Mays, his outfield contemporaries and rivals for acclamation as the greatest ballplayer in major league history.

But when he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, his first year of eligibility, Aaron received 97.8 percent of the vote from baseball writers, second at the time only to Ty Cobb, who was inducted in 1936.

Aaron grew up in Alabama amid rigid segregation and its humiliations, and he faced abuse from the stands while playing in the South as a minor leaguer. Years later, he felt that Braves fans were largely indifferent or hostile to him as he chased Ruth’s record. And the baseball commissioner at the time, Bowie Kuhn, was not present when he hit his historic 715th home run.

All that, and especially the hate mail that besieged him, seared Aaron for years to come.

As the 20th anniversary of his home run feat approached in the early 1990s, he told the sports columnist William C. Rhoden of The New York Times, “April 8, 1974, really led up to turning me off on baseball.”

“It really made me see for the first time a clear picture of what this country is about,” he said. “My kids had to live like they were in prison because of kidnap threats, and I had to live like a pig in a slaughter camp. I had to duck. I had to go out the back door of the ball parks. I had to have a police escort with me all the time. I was getting threatening letters every single day. All of these things have put a bad taste in my mouth, and it won’t go away. They carved a piece of my heart away.”

Aaron’s achievements went well beyond his home run prowess. In fact, he never hit as many as 50 homers in a single season.

He was a two-time National League batting champion and had a career batting average of .305. He was the league’s most valuable player in 1957, when the Milwaukee Braves won their only World Series championship. He was voted an All-Star in all but his first and last seasons, and he won three Gold Glove awards for his play in right field.

Aaron combined with the Hall of Fame third baseman Eddie Mathews for 863 home runs during their 13 years together on the Braves, the most ever for two teammates.

Aaron remains No. 1 in the major leagues in total bases (6,856) and runs batted in (2,297); No. 2 in at-bats (12,364), behind Pete Rose; and No. 3 in hits (3,771), behind Rose and Cobb. He won the National League’s single-season home run title four times, though his highest total was only 47, in 1971. Matching his jersey number, he hit exactly 44 home runs in four different seasons.

[Image] On April 4, 1974, Aaron hit his 714th home run, tying Ruth’s record, during a game against the Cincinnati Reds before a sellout crowd of 52,154 at Riverfront Stadium. Credit...Associated Press

At six feet tall and 180 pounds, Aaron was hardly the picture of a slugger, but he had thick, powerful wrists, enabling him to whip the bat out of his right-handed stance with uncommon speed.

“He had great forearms and wrists,” Lew Burdette, the outstanding Braves pitcher, recalled in Danny Peary’s oral history “We Played the Game” (1994). “He could be fooled completely and be way out on his front foot, and the bat would still be back, and he’d just roll his wrists and hit the ball out of the ballpark.”

Aaron was quick on the bases and in the outfield.

“There aren’t five men faster in baseball, and no better base runner,” Bobby Bragan, Aaron’s manager in the mid-1960s, told Sports Illustrated. “If you need a base, he’ll steal it quietly. If you need a shoestring catch, he’ll make it, and his hat won’t fly off and he won’t fall on his butt. He does it like DiMaggio.”

Aaron was a keen student of pitching and kept himself in excellent shape.

“I concentrated on the pitchers,” he said in his memoir, “I Had a Hammer” (1991, with Lonnie Wheeler). “I didn’t stay up nights worrying about my weight distribution, or the location of my hands, or the turn of my hips: I stayed up thinking about the pitcher I was going to face the next day. I used to play every pitcher in my mind before I went to the ballpark.”

Dusty Baker, later a longtime manager, was mentored by Aaron when he was a young player with the Braves.

“Nobody had concentration like he did, sitting there in the dugout, looking at the pitcher through the little hole in his cap to focus on the release point,” Baker once said. “Never saw anyone do that before Hank.”

Baker said Aaron had been hampered by sciatic nerve problems but had the ability to “think away the pain and to condition himself like no other baseball player of his time.”

The San Francisco Giants’ Barry Bonds surpassed Aaron’s home run record in August 2007 and went on to hit 762 homers. But many inside baseball and out considered Bonds’s achievement to be tainted by suspicions that he had used performance-enhancing drugs in what came to be known as baseball’s steroid era, when bulked-up players achieved stunning feats of slugging.

Aaron did not speak out on steroid use, but he declined to follow Bonds around the league to witness his 756th home run. When it came in San Francisco against the Washington Nationals, Aaron limited himself to a message on the stadium’s video board: “My hope today, as it was on that April evening in 1974, is that the achievement of this record will inspire others to chase their own dreams.”

[photo] Aaron began the 1952 season with the Negro leagues’ Indianapolis Clowns, but he was signed in June by the Braves, who were in their last season in Boston. Credit...Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Inc.

A Path Away From Poverty

Henry Louis Aaron was born on Feb. 5, 1934, in Mobile, Ala., one of eight children of Herbert and Estella (Pritchett) Aaron. His father worked in shipyards. His mother joined with her husband in overseeing a close-knit family. She encouraged Henry (he never liked being called Hank, as he would customarily be known on the sports pages) to consider going to college.

In March 1948, a year after Jackie Robinson broke the modern major league color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson was in Mobile for a spring training game. Henry Aaron was in the crowd of Black youngsters who had gathered in town to hear Robinson tell them of the possibilities that would be opening to Black people.

Robinson spoke of the need to strive for a good education. But Henry, only 14 but already a talented sandlot ballplayer, cared little for his high school studies. He idolized Robinson and envisioned professional baseball as the road to escaping poverty and segregation.

While a teenager, he played alongside men many years his senior as a shortstop for the semipro Mobile Black Bears. (Mobile over the years was a breeding ground for top baseball talent, producing Satchel Paige and later the Hall of Famers Billy Williams and Willie McCovey.) He was then signed by the Negro leagues’ Indianapolis Clowns, a barnstorming team that combined entertainment with baseball, much like basketball’s Harlem Globetrotters.

After beginning the 1952 season with the Clowns, Aaron was signed in June by the Braves, who were in their last season in Boston. They assigned him to play for their farm team in Eau Claire, Wis., and he was named the Northern League’s rookie of the year that season.

He was promoted in 1953 to play second base for the Jacksonville, Fla., team of the South Atlantic League, or the Sally League, becoming one of the circuit’s first five Black players.

Now he was back in the Old South.

“The whites used to yell from the stands and call us alligator bait,” Felix Mantilla, an infielder from Puerto Rico who roomed with Aaron at Jacksonville and later joined him in Milwaukee, told Howard Bryant in “The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron” (2010). “Jacksonville wasn’t so bad. But places like Columbus and Macon, those places were wicked.”

Aaron led the Sally League in hitting and was voted its most valuable player. But he was a poor infielder, so he learned to play the outfield in Puerto Rican winter ball and in 1954 earned a trip to spring training with the Braves, who were in their second season in Milwaukee.

Historic Career Begins

When outfielder Bobby Thomson, newly acquired from the New York Giants (less than three years after his celebrated pennant-winning homer at the Polo Grounds), broke an ankle during the exhibition season, Aaron took his place.

He hit his first major league home run on April 23, at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, off the Cardinals’ Vic Raschi, the former Yankee standout. Thomson returned in July, but Aaron remained a regular until he, too, broke an ankle early in September. He finished with 13 home runs and a .280 batting average.

Aaron emerged as a star in 1955, hitting .314, and he won his first batting title the following season, batting .328. When he was voted the National League’s Most Valuable Player in 1957, he came close to capturing the batting triple crown, leading the league in home runs (44) and runs batted in (132) and finishing in a tie for third place in hitting with a .322 average.

[photo] In 1957, Warren Giles, the president of the National League, presented Aaron with the award for winning the league’s batting title in 1956. Credit...Associated Press

The Braves won their first pennant in Milwaukee in 1957, clinching it with Aaron’s 11th-inning home run against the Cardinals on Sept. 23.

In the World Series, Aaron hit .393 with three home runs as the Braves defeated the Yankees in seven games. Milwaukee won the pennant again in 1958, this time losing to the Yankees in a seven-game World Series.

Aaron had his only three-homer game on June 21, 1959, at the San Francisco Giants’ Seals Stadium, their home before moving to Candlestick Park. He won his second batting title that season, hitting .355, but the Braves lost a pennant playoff to the Dodgers.

Aaron’s younger brother Tommie joined the Braves in 1962, playing regularly as a first baseman and outfielder, and on June 12, the brothers hit home runs in the same game, against the Dodgers. On Aug. 20, 1965, Aaron and Mathews became the No. 1 home run tandem in major league history, surpassing the mark of 722 homers hit by Ruth and Lou Gehrig with the Yankees.

With the Braves no longer pennant contenders and attendance declining, they moved to Atlanta in 1966. But they returned to the top of the standings in 1969, capturing the National League West after a divisional alignment and the playoff system had been put into place.

In the first National League Championship Series, Aaron hit three home runs, but the Braves were swept in three games in the year of the Miracle Mets.

Aaron became the ninth player to achieve the 3,000-hit milestone when he singled against the Reds at Crosley Field in Cincinnati on May 17, 1970. In February 1972, he became the highest-paid player in baseball history, signing a three-year, $600,000 deal (about $3.7 million in today’s money).

When he won the home run title in 1957 with 44, Aaron was slashing line drives all over the park, almost half of them having been opposite-field homers, to right field. But by the early 1970s he was pulling the ball more. He hit 34 home runs in the strike-shortened 1972 season.

A Record Nears

As Aaron chased Ruth’s record in 1973, he finally emerged as a national figure. He appeared on the covers of Time and Newsweek and was sought out for television and newspaper interviews.

Charles Schulz, whose “Peanuts” comic strip had become a staple of national popular culture, turned his attention to Aaron in August 1973 with drawings that ridiculed the bigots besieging him.

Aaron received some 930,000 pieces of fan mail, but among the good wishes were numerous racist letters. Some contained threats, and those were turned over to the F.B.I. The Braves hired two Atlanta police officers to sit in the stands while off duty, overlooking Aaron in the outfield, in the event of trouble.

Aaron was 39 years old that season and appeared in only 120 games. After he hit his 700th home run on July 21 off the Philadelphia Phillies’ Ken Brett in Atlanta, he said he was “kind of disappointed” over the failure of Commissioner Kuhn to convey congratulations. Kuhn responded by saying he was one of Aaron’s biggest rooters, and he promised to lead the celebration when he hit Nos. 714 and 715.

Aaron hit 40 home runs in the 1973 season, leaving him one shy of Ruth’s record, with 713.

Image As Aaron chased Ruth’s record in 1973, he finally emerged as a national figure. He appeared on “The Flip Wilson Show” in October of that year. Credit...United Press International

The off-season was filled with anticipation, and it also held commercial opportunities. Though Aaron had received few promotional offers in his career, the television manufacturer Magnavox signed him in January 1974 to a five-year, $1 million contract in anticipation of his breaking Ruth’s record.

But there were troubles anew as spring training loomed. The Braves’ ownership said it intended to keep Aaron out of the team’s three-game season-opening series in Cincinnati so that he would have a chance to tie and break Ruth’s record when the team returned for its opening homestand, a presumed box-office bonanza.

Aaron seemed amenable enough. “The people of Atlanta are the people I have to please,” he said at a sports dinner. “I believe I owe it to them.”

But Kuhn told the Braves that he expected them to play Aaron in at least two of the three games in Cincinnati, citing the integrity of the game.

Aaron was in the lineup when the Braves opened against the Reds on Thursday afternoon, April 4, before a sellout crowd of 52,154 at Riverfront Stadium. He came to the plate in the first inning with two men on base and one out, facing Jack Billingham, a 19-game winner the previous season. Aaron let the first four pitches go by, the count reaching 3 and 1, and then Billingham delivered a sinker that headed toward the outside part of the plate but tailed in. Aaron lashed a rising liner that cleared the 12-foot-high wall slightly to the left of the 375-foot sign in left-center field.

No. 714 flashed on the scoreboard above the upper deck in center field as a Cincinnati police officer caught the baseball on the first bounce after it had fallen into the gap between the outfield fence and a high wall fronting the stands. Aaron trotted around the bases, his head held high, his elbows back.

Image Bowie Kuhn, the baseball commissioner, presented Aaron with a trophy on the field in Cincinnati after his 714th home run. Credit...Bob Johnson/Associated Press

He received a standing ovation as his teammates swarmed out of their dugout to greet him. Moments later, Kuhn and Vice President Gerald R. Ford, who had thrown out the first ball, went onto the field to congratulate him. A member of the Reds’ grounds crew retrieved the baseball from the police officer, and it was presented to Aaron.

Later in the game, Aaron was retired twice and walked. He was not in the starting lineup for the second game in Cincinnati but played in the third game after Kuhn threatened penalties against the Braves if he were held out again. Aaron went homerless in that game in any case, remaining tied with Ruth.

The Braves opened their home schedule the following Monday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers, before a record home crowd of 53,775. In the fourth inning, with a misty rain falling and nobody on base, Aaron strode to the plate, facing the left-hander Al Downing. Ball one.

Next came a fastball down the middle, and Aaron connected. He drove the ball 400 feet over the left-center field fence for home run No. 715.

Image Aaron watched the flight of the ball on his 715th home run. He broke a record that had stood since Ruth hit his last major league home run in 1935. Credit...Harry Harris/Associated Press

The fans erupted with an 11-minute ovation, and Tom House, a reliever for the Braves, returned the ball from the Atlanta bullpen.

The veteran Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully waited while the roars resounded, and then he spoke to the history of the moment, on the diamond and beyond it.

“What a marvelous moment for baseball,” he said. “What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol.”

Aaron’s parents came onto the field, and there were hugs all around. Aaron was finally receiving the adulation that he had long felt his due. In addition to the Magnavox deal, there were some 230 “Atlanta Salutes Hank Aaron” billboards posted around the city, with corporate sponsorship.

Image Aaron held aloft his 715th home run ball after Tom House, a reliever for the Braves, had returned it to him from the Atlanta bullpen. Credit...Associated Press

But when Aaron hit homer No. 715, Kuhn was not present. The commissioner was in Cleveland, speaking to an Indians booster organization. He sent Monte Irvin, an official in his office and one of baseball’s first outstanding African-American players, with the New York Giants, to represent him. Aaron viewed it as a snub, and he did not forget it.

In mid-June, when the Braves played the Mets in their first series of the season at Shea Stadium, Aaron was presented with New York City’s Gold Medal, its highest award, by Mayor Abraham D. Beame in a ceremony outside City Hall. He toured Harlem in a motorcade and spoke to 5,000 young people at Marcus Garvey Park.

But there were discordant notes as well. When Mathews, his slugging teammate, was fired as manager just before the 1974 All-Star Game, Aaron said he felt “a little bit insulted” at not being offered the opportunity to become major league baseball’s first Black manager.

The post went instead to Clyde King, a veteran baseball man. The following season, Frank Robinson, who died in 2019, became the first Black manager, with the Indians.

Back to Milwaukee

Aaron had little interest in continuing to play for the Braves after the 1974 season. He felt that notwithstanding Atlanta’s reputation as a progressive representative of the New South, he had received only tepid backing from the fans as he neared Ruth’s record. And he heard racial abuse from some fans that reminded him of his minor league days in the Sally League.

“I didn’t expect the fans to give me a standing ovation every time I stepped on the field, but I thought a few of them might come over to my side as I approached Ruth,” Aaron said in his memoir. “At the very least, I felt I had earned the right not be verbally abused and racially ravaged in my home ballpark.”

The modern civil rights movement made historic gains during Aaron’s career, but he knew that the road to equal treatment remained long.

“Any Black who thinks the same thing can’t happen today is sadly mistaken,” he told The Times in 1994. “It happens now with people in three-piece suits instead of with hoods on.”

Early on in his career, Black players were barred from hotels where white teammates stayed during spring training in Florida. Aaron joined with Bill Bruton, the Braves’ African-American center fielder, in pressing management for change, with no immediate success. Although Aaron wasn’t vocal on the larger civil rights scene, he became interested in the writings of James Baldwin, decrying patience in the face of racism.

Aaron contributed a chapter to “Baseball Has Done It,” Jackie Robinson’s 1964 collection of first-person accounts from baseball figures telling of their battles against racism.

“I’ve read some newspapermen saying I was just a dumb kid from the South with no education and all I knew was to go out there and hit,” Aaron wrote. “Baseball has done a lot for me, given me an education in meeting other kinds of people,” he continued. But he added pointedly, “It has taught me that regardless of who you are and how much money you make, you are still a Negro.”

Following his record-breaking 1974 season, Aaron was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers of the American League. He signed a two-year contract at $240,000 a season that enabled him to close out his major league career in the city where it began. In those two years, he hit 22 home runs, his 755th and final one coming on July 20, 1976, against Dick Drago of the California Angels.

That same year, Aaron was named the Braves’ vice president in charge of player development, overseeing their farm system. He held that post until 1989. He was later a senior vice president of the Braves and worked on behalf of the Hank Aaron Chasing the Dream Foundation, which helped gifted children develop their talent. His business interests included auto dealerships and fast-food restaurants.

The Atlanta Braves retired Aaron’s No. 44 in April 1977 and unveiled a statue, depicting him swinging, at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium in 1982. They moved it to their second home, Turner Field, in 1997. The address of that facility, now known as Georgia State Stadium, is 755 Hank Aaron Drive.

A new statue that captures the moment of impact between bat and ball on Aaron’s 715th home run was created by the Atlanta-based artist Ross Rossin for SunTrust Park (now Truist Park), to which the Braves moved for the 2017 season.

Accolades in Later Years

On the 25th anniversary of Aaron’s 715th home run, Major League Baseball created the Hank Aaron Award, given annually to the players with the best overall offensive performances in each league.

Aaron received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, from President George W. Bush in 2002. The citation said he “embodies the true spirit of our nation.” The Baseball Hall of Fame opened a permanent exhibit in 2009 chronicling Aaron’s life. His childhood home was moved on a flatbed truck to the grounds of Hank Aaron Stadium, which was the home of the Mobile BayBears, a former minor league team, and opened as a museum in 2010.

Aaron is the 10th Baseball Hall of Famer to die since last April, and the third this year alone. The longtime Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda and the pitcher Don Sutton both died this month.

Image Aaron and his wife, Billye, at a ceremony celebrating the 40th anniversary of his 715th home run before the start of a game between the Braves and the Mets in Atlanta on April 8, 2014. Credit...David Goldman/Associated Press

Aaron’s survivors include his wife, Billye; two sons, Lary and Henry Jr., and two daughters, Dorinda and Gaile, all of whom he had with his first wife, Barbara (the marriage ended in divorce); and his daughter Ceci, from Billye Aaron’s first marriage. His brother Tommie, who played intermittently for the Braves for six seasons after his rookie year as a regular, died of leukemia in 1984 at age 45.

When Aaron celebrated his 80th birthday in February 2014, Billye Aaron and the baseball commissioner at the time, Bud Selig, hosted a party at the Hay-Adams hotel in Washington, where President Barack Obama and his family lived for two weeks before his first inauguration.

“There’s a young man who lives right over there whose life’s path was made easier by Henry Aaron,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said as he glanced at the White House across the street, Sports Illustrated reported.

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery unveiled an oil painting of Aaron by Mr. Rossin to mark the occasion.

The Braves honored Aaron at their home opener on April 8, 2014, the 40th anniversary of his breaking Ruth’s record. Though weak from a partial hip replacement after a fall, he spoke briefly. The number 715 had been mowed into the outfield grass, where 715 fans held baseball-shaped signs, each with a number and a date signifying every one of those home runs.

Aaron, Mays, Sandy Koufax and Johnny Bench were selected by fan balloting as the four greatest living players in a promotion leading up to the 2015 All-Star Game at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. They were introduced on the field before the first pitch.

Unique Among His Peers

For virtually all his major league career, Aaron competed against Willie Mays.

“It’s just not my way to be flashy or flamboyant the way, say, Willie is,” Aaron said in a 1970 interview with Sport magazine. “I have my own even rhythm, and I guess it just doesn’t attract the kind of attention that a more colorful style does.”

Both were raised in Alabama (Mays in Westfield and then Fairfield, about 225 miles north of Mobile), and they both played in the Negro leagues. But there was a perception of frostiness between them. When they were interviewed together by Bob Costas in 2008 for his HBO program “Costas Now,” they played down any antagonism. Aaron said there had been “competition” but “no resentment, no animosity.”

Aaron crossed baseball paths with Mickey Mantle in two World Series and in All-Star Games.

“If they had a choice of who they wanted to break Babe Ruth’s record, it would have been Mickey Mantle first,” he once said. “Mickey was like Marilyn Monroe. He didn’t have to be the greatest ballplayer. He had that charisma. The Yankees had won all those pennants.”

When he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, Aaron felt he had finally been accorded the respect he deserved. But he did not slight the Babe.

“It was always this player and that player and then Henry Aaron, but now I think I’m appreciated,” Aaron said. As for Ruth’s devotees: “I never wanted them to forget Babe Ruth. I just wanted them to remember Henry Aaron.”