Hank Aaron Hits No. 715, Tops Babe Ruth

In the bottom of the fourth inning, with 53,775 fans on their feet at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, Hank Aaron turned on a 1-0 fastball and sent it arcing into the left-center-field bullpen. Number 715. Babe Ruth's record — 714 home runs, standing since 1935 — had fallen.

The date was April 8, 1974, and the pitcher was Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander Al Downing. The blast tied the game 3-3 in what became a 7-4 Braves win, broadcast to a national television audience. Aaron was mobbed rounding the bases — two fans even scrambled onto the field to run alongside him between second and third — and met his parents and teammates at home plate. The game stopped for eleven minutes of celebration.

The chase had consumed the previous winter. Aaron finished the 1973 season stuck on 713, then opened 1974 by homering off Cincinnati's Jack Billingham on Opening Day — number 714, tying Ruth. The Braves benched him for the next game, hoping he would break the record at home; Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ordered him back into the lineup. He went hitless in the series finale and flew to Atlanta still tied.

Through it all, Aaron carried a burden few athletes have known. As a Black star chasing the most hallowed record in a league that had been integrated for less than thirty years, he received bags of racist hate mail — the postal service said some 930,000 letters arrived during the chase — many of them death threats. After number 715, his relief was plain: "I just thank God it's all over," he told the crowd.

Aaron was no one-season wonder. Born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1934, he built one of the most complete careers in baseball history: the 1957 National League MVP award, a World Series title with the Milwaukee Braves that same year, and finally 755 home runs — a record that stood until 2007. He remains baseball's all-time leader in runs batted in, with 2,297, and in total bases, with 6,856.

After retiring in 1976, Aaron became one of baseball's first Black front-office executives, working to open coaching and executive jobs to minority candidates. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1982 on the first ballot and died in 2021 at 86.

Why it matters: records fall; dignity endures. Aaron broke the game's most famous record while carrying the ugliest weight in sports — and did it with a grace that made April 8, 1974, a milestone far beyond baseball.

Photo: Larry Sharkey, Los Angeles Times (via UCLA Library Digital Collections), CC BY 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).