Hank Aaron: Interview with the Former Atlanta Braves Slugger

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AH: Do you recall the time, as a young player, when you first met Jackie?

AARON: When I was in high school–when I was in Mobile, Alabama–I remember Jackie Robinson. They had a farm team in Mobile, and teams always used to come through there to play the Mobile Bears. And Jackie came there to make a speech, and I remember that I stayed out of school to listen to him speak.

AH: Did that speech, and meeting him at that time, set your career on its course?

AARON: Well, he certainly did affect me when I listened to him. But even before then he affected me, just knowing that Jackie Robinson was the first black man that ever played professional baseball certainly inspired me to go ahead and fulfill my dream.

AH: When he came up to the big leagues, did every black baseball fan in America become a Dodger fan?

AARON: I would have to say almost ninety percent of the blacks–of minorities in this country–became Dodger fans. In fact, a lot of them still hold the Dodgers to be true. They still feel like they were the ones who broke the ice, and they need to be loyal to them. You have to remember that black folks are very loyal, and I would have to say that was a turning point in the Dodgers’ career.

AH: There was some comment at the time that Jackie was brought up by Branch Rickey more because of his personality, his upbringing, and his intelligence than for his baseball ability. Perhaps there were more athletic players who could have been brought up?

AARON: I’m sure some of that was true. I’m sure they probably could’ve brought in a lot more, many more, players that had more talent than Jackie Robinson. But that wasn’t the only criteria at that time. You had to have somebody who could deal with the pressure; you had to have somebody who had the outlook of a Dr. Martin Luther King, who could turn the other cheek at times, and also be able to play baseball so that people would appreciate it. So, I’m sure the things mentioned, all of that was true.

AH: What was it about Jackie’s personality that made him a good choice to be the first black man in major-league baseball?

AARON: Jackie Robinson was an educated man; he understood the pressure. He understood that if he failed, he would set integration back–as far as baseball–twenty or thirty years. He [Rickey] felt like Jackie was intelligent enough to know that he had to– its unfortunate–but he had to prove himself, not only to his teammates, but to everybody in the country; that if given the opportunity, blacks could play baseball as well as everybody else. But also, that if given the opportunity he could withstand a little bit more than that, because you had a lot of Southerners still playing in the major leagues, and they didn’t like integration. A lot of players on the opposite teams didn’t like it. You also had some teammates that didn’t like him playing in the big leagues.

AH: At the beginning of his rookie year, three of his teammates circulated a petition to prevent him from playing, correct?

AARON: That’s true. So, I don’t know that I could have played under those conditions. I played under a lot of tough conditions, but playing under those conditions where you had some of your teammates, had some of the players . . . you just wondered sometimes if when you walked in the shower, everybody wouldn’t run out.

AH: Over his career, Jackie began to change and became more embittered, did he not?

AARON: He had proven himself, that if given the opportunity he could play baseball. He had proven that to himself, but he was a man, and he had a temper just like everyone else. He felt like he had done all of these things, and he just needed to be his own man. He had a lot of pressure stored up in him from when people would slide into him, slap him, call him names, and all that other stuff. He just felt like he didn’t need to take that anymore.

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Tags: African American History, American History, People