Legendary baseball player Hank Aaron, who began and ended his major-league career in Milwaukee, has passed away in Atlanta at age 86, reports the Milwaukee Journal.
Former Milwaukee Brewers owner and baseball commissioner Bud Selig, who knew Aaron for 63 years and counted him among his closest friends, said he received news of Aaron’s death, apparently from a stroke, from a longtime assistant of the baseball great.
“I’m absolutely heartbroken; heart sick,” Selig said. “This is so devastating. I know some people may quarrel with it but I’ve always said he was the greatest player of our generation. But he was a better human being. I’m so sad.
“When you think back to what he accomplished on the field, he was an even greater man off it. He was the same nice, wonderfully decent human being that he was when I first met him in 1958.”
After playing with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro League and the minors, beginning in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, he debuted with the Milwaukee Braves in 1954 at the age of 20. Aaron actually accepted a $10,000 signing bonus from the Boston Braves in ’52, before the team relocated to Milwaukee.
Playing at first in the infield, Aaron broke his habit of hitting cross-handed and batted .336 for Eau Claire, a Class C entry in the Northern League. In 1953, the year the Braves moved to Wisconsin, he was assigned to Class A Jacksonville, Fla., where he endured the indignity of racial segregation to be named MVP of the South Atlantic League. Aaron then was sent to winter ball in Puerto Rico to learn how to play the outfield, a watershed moment in his career.
Known as “Hammer” or “Hammerin’ Hank” for his ability to sock home runs, Aaron played 21 seasons for the Braves in Milwaukee and Atlanta, after the team moved there in 1966. At the bequest of Selig, who quickly forged what became a long-term friendship with Aaron, the slugger returned to Milwaukee to finish his career with the Brewers in 1975-’76.
