Actors - Hank Aaron

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	Actors - Hank Aaron

Henry Louis "Hank" Aaron (born February 5, 1934 in Mobile, Alabama, United States), is a retired American baseball player and member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Aaron is best known for setting the Major League record for most home runs in a career (755), surpassing the previous mark of 714 by Babe Ruth. Aaron also holds the career marks for RBI (2,297), extra base hits (1,477) and total bases (6,856). He won one World Series ring with the Milwaukee Braves in 1957, and the National League Most Valuable Player Award the same year. He also earned three Gold Glove Awards, and made 21 All-Star appearances.

Pre-professional career

Henry Louis Aaron was born in a part of Mobile, Alabama called Down The Bay. It was a poor area of town populated mostly by minorities. His family later moved to a better part of Mobile called Toulminville, where he was brought up and attended school. In Central High School, Aaron played shortstop and third base and was an outstanding hitter though he batted cross-handed. His team won the Negro High School Championship two years running. In high school, he also excelled in football.

Aaron's last two years of high school were spent at Josephine Allen Institute, a private high school. Aaron was so proficient a ballplayer at this young age that before his fifteenth birthday he was playing on a semi-pro team, the Pritchett Athletics, as their shortstop and third baseman. He made $3 a game. He tried out for the Dodgers but did not get to show his abilities to the scouts there. He then started playing with the semi-pro Mobile Black Bears for $10 a game.

His mother wanted Aaron to attend college in Florida. But with the promise to finish high school, on November 20, 1951 he was signed by scout Ed Scott to play for the Negro American League champion Indianapolis Clowns after the Black Bears played an exhibition against the Clowns the previous year. Aaron helped lead the Clowns to victory in the 1952 Negro League World Series.

Professional career

Minor leagues

On June 14, 1952 Aaron's contract was acquired by the Boston Braves for $10,000. He was the last Negro League player to make the jump to the major leagues. Aaron was assigned to the Braves' Class C farm club, the Eau Claire Bears, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin where he played second base. He got two line drive singles in his first game and ended the season batting .326, and won the Northern League's Rookie of the Year. He earned $350 a month. In 1953, Aaron, along with Horace Garner and Felix Mantilla, was sent to the Jacksonville Tars to break the color line in the South Atlantic League. Despite enduring non-stop racial epithets and threats, Aaron led the league in runs (115), hits (208), doubles (36), RBI (115), and batting average (.362) to become the league's Most Valuable Player. One writer said, "Henry Aaron led the league in everything except hotel accommodations".

To prepare for the big leagues, Aaron played winter ball in Puerto Rico and learned to play the outfield. On March 13, 1954, Braves left fielder Bobby Thomson broke his ankle sliding into second base during a spring training game. The next day Aaron made his first spring training start for the Braves in left field and hit a home run.

Major leagues

The early years

On April 13, 1954, Aaron made his major league debut and went 0-for-5 against the Cincinnati Reds' Joe Nuxhall. In the same game, Aaron's teammate, Eddie Mathews hit two home runs, the first two of a record 863 home runs the pair would hit as teammates. On April 15, 1954 Aaron got his first major league hit, a single off of Cardinals pitcher Vic Raschi. Aaron hit his first Major League home run on April 23, 1954 off of Raschi. Over the next 122 games, Aaron batted .280 (he would not hit that low again until 1966) with 13 homers (he wouldn't go below 20 for the next 20 years) before suffering a broken ankle on September 5.

In the following season, Aaron was moved to right field, where he played for most of his career, winning three Gold Gloves. 1955 also saw the first of a record-tying 24 All-Star Games for Aaron – only Willie Mays and Stan Musial appeared in as many All-Star Games. On June 24, 1955, Aaron became the first strike out victim of the Brooklyn Dodgers' future Hall of Famer, Sandy Koufax. Koufax came on in relief for the Dodgers on Milwaukee's County Stadium, pitching two shutout innings and fanning two. Aaron finished the season batting .314 with 27 home runs and 106 RBI.

1956 saw Aaron hit .328 to win the first of two NL batting titles. He is also named The Sporting News' NL Player of the Year. Two changes were made in 1957 that had a profound effect on Aaron. First, he went from second in the batting order to fourth, behind Eddie Mathews instead of in front of him, and, second, he switched from a 36-ounce bat to a 34-ounce model. Aaron responded by leading the league with 44 home runs, a career-high 132 RBI, batted .322 and won his only NL MVP Award. During a game on August 15th, Aaron belted his 100th major league home run off of the Reds' Don Gross. On September 23, 1957, Aaron had what he called the best moment of his career. Aaron drilled a pitch from the Cardinals' Billy Muffett for a two-run homer in the 11th inning of a game. It clinched the Braves' first pennant in Milwaukee and Aaron was carried off the field by his teammates. That year, Milwaukee registered its only World Series victory behind right-handed pitcher Lew Burdette, who defeated the Yankees three times. Aaron did his part by hitting .393 with three homers and seven RBI.

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