Bear down. Bow down to no one. Pay it forward.
These are the lessons that Jackie Robinson taught Henry Louis Aaron as Aaron embarked on his remarkable career in Major League Baseball, and Aaron took the words to heart.
Aaron, “Hammerin’ Hank” to generations of baseball fans, died on Friday at age 86.
The term “GOAT” and the word “legend” get thrown around too freely these days, but over the last century there are few athletes, few people of any background, for whom both are incredibly apt. Aaron is arguably the greatest baseball player of all time, and for what he did on the field while absorbing arrow after arrow, so many of them tipped with the poison of racism, he is a legendary figure.