Gifted and hardworking, Henry Aaron aspired to excellence in his work. That’s all. No sooner did he achieve it than he found himself conscripted into a role he never bargained for. He rose to the challenge, with an unfeigned low-key decorum that was at the heart of his contribution to America’s self-understanding.
From his childhood in Mobile, Ala., during the Great Depression, Aaron knew hardship. He learned early the value of middle-class virtues. “I grew up in a home where there was little in the way of material goods,” he said in his induction speech in Cooperstown in 1982, “but there was an abundance of love and discipline.