Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record of 714 during a spring night in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 8, 1974. George Plimpton’s brilliant book, Hank Aaron: One for the Record (The Inside Story of Baseball’s Greatest Home Run), transports the reader to the Atlanta Stadium on that historic Monday night.
Plimpton, an authority on American literature, wrote My League, Paper Lion, The Bogey Man, Shadow Box, Mad Ducks and Bears, Open Net and other books. Plimpton sparred with Muhammad Ali, courted Jackie Kennedy, played football with the Detroit Lions, appeared in numerous films and served as the editor of the Paris Review. While at the Paris Review, Plimpton interviewed luminaries Ernest Hemingway, Terry Southern and Vali Myers. Plimpton personified a man of Arts and Letters.
When Plimpton died in 2003, at 76, Hunter S. Thompson wrote: “You didn’t want to let him down, and George had extremely high standards. Every moment of being in his company was part of my Education.”
Plimpton spent a fair amount of time with Hank Aaron since he covered Aaron’s home run odyssey for Sports Illustrated. Plimpton’s concise One for the Record revolves around The Pitcher (Los Angeles Dodgers’ Al Dowling), The Hitter (Henry “Hank” Aaron), The Observer (Braves broadcaster Milo Hamilton) and The Fan (the public).
Plimpton detailed the unrelenting pressure Hank Aaron endured as a black man chasing Babe Ruth’s record. Plimpton describes inside an eye of the media hurricane surrounding Aaron, death threats he received as well as the public’s pure fever for him to break Ruth’s 39-year record. On that April night in Atlanta, the sold out crowd of 53,775 (and millions of others) watched Hank Aaron make history. The glorious moment happened in the fourth inning…
Plimpton wrote: “I watched 715 go over the fence while sitting back in the left-field corner. I had taken a quick look to either side—at the rows of faces in perfect profile, poised in expectation, jaws slightly dropped, a gallery leaning slightly forward off their seats in the ashen light of the arcs. Then, almost as one, everybody stood up. I’d never heard a sound like that. My notes show that a seismograph scribble was the best I could do to describe the sustained pitch—absolutely constant, so that after a while it seemed caught inside the head, like a violent hum in the ears.”
Plimpton nails an adrenaline-laced account of an emotional moment in American sports. When asked about memories of his home run, Hank Aaron said: “I don’t remember the noise. Or the two kids that ran on the field. My teammates at home plate, I remember seeing them. I remember my mother out there hugging me. That’s what I remember more than anything about that home run when I think back on it.”
George Plimpton’s Hank Aaron: One for the Record exists as one of the finest books about baseball.
RELATED CONTENT
Terry Southern’s Red Dirt Marijuana