Hank Aaron and his home-run record is covered in the first episode. You’re from Atlanta...what does Hank Aaron’s legacy mean to you, the city and sports as a whole?
Hank Aaron is the most iconic Atlanta Brave. And for someone like me who grew up in the Atlanta area, I grew up playing baseball. He is the reason I wore the number 44, and I wasn't alone. Everybody was running around with the number 44. Hank Aaron's home run record is just iconic, 755. You can never take that away from someone like him. But I also thought about the number 715 when he officially passed Babe Ruth to become, at the time, the home run leader. This was a moment that showed that someone like Hank Aaron belongs in the upper echelons of baseball and couldn't be denied. No amount of societal pressure or racism could take that away, and that's part of why this record sort of transcends sports.
Every generation has its baseball icons. Why does Hank Aaron remain the standard?
What he represented to the city of Atlanta, he was this icon, this larger-than-life figure, and he helped put the city on the map, especially in terms of baseball coming from the city of Milwaukee as well. And then for the sport as a whole, you look at the time period when he was playing, it was not easy to be Black in America, even less so to be a public Black figure breaking records in what was largely a white game at the time. And so, for someone like Hank Aaron in the sport, he became the symbol of someone who could overcome so much adversity outside of the game of baseball to stand on that mountaintop and do something that no one had ever done in Major League Baseball at the time, and doing so ahead of icons like Babe Ruth.
Tell us about your most memorable Braves moments.
The Braves. Some high highs, some low lows, but honestly, they've been an incredible franchise to follow and be a fan of. I mean, you just look at the 90s, I think widely considered the best team in baseball. You go to the World Series five times, you only win one of them, but still a win is a win. Now, a specific memory that I always think about is a regular season game. I want to say it was like 2010 or so and my friends and I left school early to go to this game. It was a daytime game, and the Braves were getting killed. They were just getting destroyed. So, it was the 9th inning, they were down by, I want to say like 6 runs or so, and we were going to leave, but all of a sudden, we got 1 run back. OK, all right. Sounds good. We're clawing it back. I might as well stay. We're already here. And little by little, we get to this moment where a man by the name of Brooks Conrad pinch hits. We don't even really know who this guy is, but the bases are loaded. And it's a grand slam. And the Braves walk off with a grand slam to pull off what I think was the 2nd largest 9th inning comeback in franchise history, and we were there to see it, and I will always remember that as a Braves fan.
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