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    I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story
    I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story
    I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story
    Ebook459 pages8 hours

    I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story

    By Hank Aaron and Lonnie Wheeler

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story is an intimate memoir by a baseball legend—and a fascinating social history of twentieth-century America.

    The Classic New York Times Bestseller

    The man who shattered Babe Ruth's lifetime home run record, Henry "Hammering Hank" Aaron left his indelible mark on professional baseball and the world. But the world also left its mark on him.

    With courage and candor, Aaron’s revelatory life story recalls his struggles and triumphs in an atmosphere of virulent racism. He relives the breathtaking moment when, in the heat of hatred and controversy, he hit his 715th home run to break Ruth's cherished record—an accomplishment for which Aaron received more than 900,000 letters, many of them vicious and racially charged. And his story continues through the remainder of his milestone-setting, barrier-smashing career as a player and, later, Atlanta Braves executive—offering an eye-opening and unforgettable portrait of an incomparable athlete, his sport, his epoch, and his world.

    “Elegant, uncomplaining, and inspiring, I Had a Hammer is a true American treasure about a true sustainable hero.” —New York Times–bestselling author Douglas Brinkley

    “Beautifully written. This book covers so many bases, it is virtually impossible to consider it just another sports biography.” —New York Times Book Review

    “[Hank Aaron’s] book is written with the same authority with which he wielded his bat.” —San Francisco Chronicle
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMar 17, 2009
    ISBN9780061873379
    I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story

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    • 4/5
      Years before Henry Aaron was even born, before Babe Ruth himself had finalized the career home run record it was Aaron’s fate to challenge, his father had scoped out the dimensions of what lay ahead. In 1928, Herbert Aaron climbed a tree to see the Babe play at Mobile’s Hartwell Field and swore “he saw Ruth hit a ball into the coal car of a train and they didn’t retrieve the ball until the train pulled into New Orleans.”As much as Aaron’s exploits are inevitably associated with the near-mythic Ruth, experts from the era when Hank became a star thought his hitting style most resembled that of Rogers Hornsby, a hitter who with Honus Wagner and Stan Musial was one of the three greatest National League batters of the era before major-league baseball allowed black players on its fields. Hornsby was second only to Ty Cobb in lifetime batting average, and if Aaron had possessed less talent for slugging he might have challenged Ty’s hits record instead. But Aaron was beyond category. A famous quote, variously recorded by history, had it that “trying to sneak a fastball past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster.”Written with Lonnie Wheeler, Hank Aaron’s I Had a Hammer gives baseball fans an interesting story of his life. And having myself been in the left field seats for one of his 755 dingers, I am glad to have found out what made it all possible. Note: I’ve read that Howard Bryant’s biography of Aaron, published 19 years after this book, claims it’s a myth Hank batted cross-handed when young. But in I Had a Hammer Aaron himself says he did. I know which book I’m believing.

    Book preview

    I Had a Hammer - Hank Aaron

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