Hank Aaron: Interview with the Former Atlanta Braves Slugger

 | American History  | one comment  | Print This Post  | Email This Post

AH: There was a lot of prejudice in baseball at that time; was it across the board?

AARON: There was a lot of prejudice; I don’t know if it was across the board, but there was enough of it. There was a lot of it there with just about every team in the major leagues.

AH: Was Rickey right to be so careful about the type of player he brought up?

AARON: I thought he brought up the right person. Not everybody, as I’ve said before, could have handled it. Jackie Robinson did handle it. I think the Dodgers was the right club to be with. I think that Jackie Robinson was the right person to achieve this goal.

AH: Was Branch Rickey the right person to embark on this journey?

AARON: Oh yes, no question about it.

AH: Why do you say that?

AARON: He knew what it was going to take, and he foresaw at the time that if Jackie Robinson broke into the major leagues, it was going to change the whole concept of baseball–not only with the Dodgers, but with the whole major leagues. And it did. I think that black players changed the way that baseball was played as far as speed and power and doing some other things. And that holds true right now. When Jackie was playing, and after Jackie and in my era, it has continued that black players, most of them, can do things on the base paths that the average person just can’t do.

AH: Do you think Jackie was aware that this was more than just a sports issue, and was a societal issue as well?

AARON: I think he realized this was more than a sports issue. . . . He had to look at it from the standpoint that he was the prime example. If he failed, baseball was going to be set back twenty or thirty years. And he had the world, everything on his shoulders, as far as baseball and for that matter, sports.

AH: Where would baseball be today without Jackie Robinson?

AARON: . . .You would see guys hitting, going base to base. Ty Cobb, when he played, from what I gather, was one of the greatest players who ever played. Along came Lou Brock, then Rickey Henderson, who erased all those records, and showed that stealing the number of bases that Ty Cobb stole was easy to erase. Along came myself, and I hit 755 home runs . . . . Black baseball players have set all kinds of examples in sports, especially in baseball.

AH: Weren’t there a lot of people rooting against you when it came to setting the home run record?

AARON: That’s true. That didn’t bother me as much as you hear. Jackie Robinson had set the tone, and I was not about to fold the tent. I was there to perform my duty, and I knew that I had been given the opportunity to play. And just for a few people to write a few letters and all these other things, it didn’t make any difference to me.

AH: When you were a rookie in 1954, how had Jackie broken down some of the barriers? What were some of the challenges you faced?

AARON: I think playing with your teammates was a little bit easier. When Jackie came up, I think his teammates were against his playing in the big leagues. I think when I got to the big leagues, it was a little easier for me to play with my teammates, although I still had problems. Hotels had been integrated in some areas. We still had problems with spring training because most teams trained in the South. But a lot of things had happened before Jackie got there, and after he got there, it was a little easier for black players to get around.

AH: What were some of the changes you noticed?

AARON: When Jackie broke in you couldn’t stay at the same hotel [with the rest of the team]; your teammates, even the teammates you thought were all right, were against you. So all of these things are a lot easier.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Tags: African American History, American History, People