Before all of the Sports Illustrated covers—for the 715th home run, and the 755th home run, and everything in between and after—Henry Aaron was the subject of one paragraph in a piece about the pennant chances of the 1956 Milwaukee Braves:
“Of all the fine-looking youngsters in the National League, none has been chasing a ticket to the Hall of Fame with any more singleness of purpose than this slender 22-year-old from the mud flats of Mobile. He began the season slowly, but [manager Fred] Haney just looked at this young man with the wrist-popping swing and said, ‘He’s still below his potential.