Hank Aaron's Funeral A Reminder Of His Unmatched Legacy And Mobile's Rare Place In Baseball History

The small, wooden house that Hank Aaron helped build had just been relocated outside the stadium bearing his name.

On this day, April 14, 2010 in Mobile, the home was officially dedicated as a shrine. The Hank Aaron Childhood Home and Museum. Right next to Hank Aaron Stadium, home of the former Mobile BayBears, later to partner as a neighboring rival for the Pensacola Blue Wahoos.

The one-time shanty had been transformed. Restored. Refurbished. And now replaced into a different setting as a mantle of Aaron’s incredible rise from Mobile to baseball immortality.

“This is one of the biggest, if not the biggest honor of my life,” said Aaron on that day, addressing a gathering of baseball royalty that included fellow Alabama native Willie Mays, along with fellow Mobile native Ozzie Smith, plus Reggie Jackson, Ricky Henderson, and Bob Feller, who traveled at 93 years-old that day to help Aaron celebrate the moment.

It was poignant and powerful.

“I hope I can help inspire boys of Mobile to dream big," Aaron said that day. "I hope when children come here to visit, they will get a sense of what it takes to bring a dream to life ... the sacrifice, the hard work, the refusal to quit, the determination to never give up."

Here's hoping those inspiring words resonate with a new generation today.

Another punch-to-gut experience occurred January 22 when Aaron passed away at age 86. He was eulogized in a ceremony Tuesday (Jan. 26) at the Braves’ Truist Park. He will be buried following a private ceremony Wednesday in Atlanta.

One of the game’s greatest players and statesmen is gone. The former home run king, who endured so much to rise into becoming an American icon.

In sad irony, Aaron’s death occurred five days after Don Sutton’s passing. Two of the greatest former baseball stars from our area now gone. Not only did they play in the same era, facing each other numerous times as pitcher and slugger, they evolved into business teammates with the Atlanta Braves.

Aaron as front office executive. Sutton as the beloved broadcaster analyst. One from Molino. The other from Mobile. Together as members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

They grew up less than 60 miles apart. Think about those odds.

On that April day in 2010, it was a pinch-yourself moment outside Hank Aaron Stadium. Aaron sat in a rocking chair on the refurbished porch he used to play on as a kid.

He had a prideful gleam on his face that was unforgettable. Seared into memory.

“It was just like, ‘Wow, this is it!’ I should have retired that day, because I don’t know what else I could have done,” said Bill Shanahan, former president of the BayBears, reflecting Friday upon that day. “Hank said, ‘This is the greatest moment of my life.’

“It was really humbling to think it was the greatest moment of his life. That made the moment even more special. And then just thinking what he had to go through as a child…growing up back then in Mobile, Alabama. The hate and the anger. And he still loved Mobile.”

Aaron told Shanahan that day of the times his mother herded Hank and six other siblings under a bed in the former shanty. She wanted to protect them, keep them from sight, as the Ku Klux Klan in Mobile made one of its frequent marches down the dirt road neighborhood to intimidate and send fear into the residents.

Unfortunately, those horrific times of racism didn’t end with Aaron’s rise in baseball stardom, after breaking into the big leagues in 1954 with the Milwaukee Braves. He had to stay in different hotels, eat at different restaurants, just as his predecessor Jackie Robinson had done a full decade earlier when breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball.

Sadly, as Aaron chased Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1973, less than a decade removed from turbulent times in America, there was dissent over the achievement.

So much of it, because Aaron had a different skin color than Ruth.

I can remember the nonsense about Aaron playing so many games in Atlanta’s former Fulton County Stadium, nicknamed the launching pad for how baseballs carried out of the ballpark.

Because of that, critics said back then, it diminishes the home runs Aaron hit. Even baseball historians and members of baseball media tried to state that logic.

That was the mask for the fact Aaron was breaking a record held by an American icon.

First off, if Aaron had been playing for the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, or any of baseball’s bluebloods, it would have been a different tone.

Instead, he played most of his career for the Atlanta Braves, after their move from Milwaukee in 1966. From that point through the end of Aaron’s career in where which were one of baseball’s all-time worst franchises back then.

Secondly, baseball in the late-1960’s and 1970’s had bigger, faster, better talent than preceding decades, and most notably the pitchers.

Because Aaron tied the Ruth’s record on the second-to-last-day of the 1973 season, he had to wait the entire off-season before breaking the record on April 8, 1974.

So that increased the debate and the hate.

Watching Aaron play, he personified class. He hit home runs with class. He made great fielding plays with class. He was the definition of professional.

“He was a such a decent and kind man that somehow he managed to look with a clear eye at the racism he faced and the racism he still saw in society, but to treat each individual who crossed his path as an individual worthy of respect, worthy of kindness as long as they showed him the same,” said Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Costas, speaking January 22 on CNN.

“Growing up as small child, He told his dad he wanted to be an airline pilot,” said Costas, speaking on CNN. “And his dad said, ‘Ain’t no black airline pilots.’ And he said he wanted to be a major league baseball player, and his dad said, ‘Ain’t no black baseball players.’

“And Hank Aaron was 13 years old when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball.”

Aaron is one of five players who were born in Mobile, most playing youth and high school ball there, too, who became Hall of Famers. The others are Satchel Paige, Billy Williams, Willie McCovey and Ozzie Smith.

Only New York metro and Los Angeles have distinction of more Hall of Fame baseball players from one city in America.

Just incredible.

The future of Hank Aaron Childhood Home and Museum is hopefully greater today. The stadium is now home to high school and collegiate baseball. The museum remains open during the week for visits.

The Blue Wahoos played their final series in Mobile on August 7-11, 2019. On the Aug. 10, 2019 game, several busloads of Blue Wahoos season-ticket holders and fans traveled to Mobile for the game and toured the Hank Aaron museum.

Two former BayBear employees, Ari Rosenbaum and John Hilliard, part of the Mobile Sports and Entertainment Group, are taking care of the museum and helping bring high school and college baseball, as well as non-baseball events into Hank Aaron Stadium.

“They are trying to keep it alive and going,” Shanahan said. “Someday, hopefully, professional baseball comes back. But you have to give these guys credit, you have to support them.

“It’s about keeping the legacy of Hank Aaron alive at Hank Aaron Stadium.”

Hopefully, now more than ever, that legacy will be forever honored.