Unless I missed it, no one on Twins Daily posted anything about the significance of this past Monday in baseball history. Here is an adaptation of something I posted on Facebook that day. There's no Twins connection here, but hopefully this is okay, given the historical significance.

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The eclipse was amazing. But between that and the place the Iowa Women's Basketball team has had in my brain space lately, it nearly snuck by me that today (Monday) is also the 50th anniversary of arguably the second most significant date in baseball history, following only April 15, 1947, the day that Jackie Robinson played his first game.

Five decades ago tonight (Monday), Henry Aaron hit his 715th home run, passing Babe Ruth to become the Home Run King. In the interest of brevity (an unusual thing for me), I’ll not go into the details on the significance of the event, other than to say that Aaron was the victim of incredible hatred and voluminous hate mail for having the audacity to break the most significant record in baseball and perhaps even in all of American sports.

Upon Aaron’s death a few years ago, my favorite singer John McCutcheon, wrote an amazing song, “The Hammer.” It’s shared below. If you’re a baseball fan like me, give it a listen. If you’re more like my wife, who once lovingly said, “I don’t like baseball, but I like some people who like baseball” (and presumably you do, if you at least have me among your Facebook friends), humor me and give it a listen.

The recording concludes with the famous recording of Milo Hamilton’s call of the homer. I also love the call (linked in the comments) by the even-more famous Vin Scully, on the radio for the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers.

Scully said, “What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol.”

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I also added a couple comments to the post. Don't take them as insulting your intelligence -- I pasted exactly as I had them on Facebook, where not all my friends are as baseball-savvy as those here. 

1. Here's a link to the Scully call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjqYThEVoSQ. 

2. In the interest of keeping the original post reasonably short, I‘ll just say that it wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that I realized how much effect Aaron had on my understanding of race. I’ve written about that a time or two. If you’re interested in reading it (and if I can find it on my hard drive), message me.

3. There’s a reasonable amount of baseball jargon in the song. Ask or PM if you are a Baseball as a Second Language student and need an interpretation. The lineup of greats in the last verse, in order of appearance, is:

• First Base and Third Base (“the corners”): Lou Gehrig and Eddie Mathews (John’s a Braves fan, after all).
• Second Base and Shortstop (“up the middle”): Jackie Robinson and Ernie Banks.
• Pitcher: Satchel Paige
• Catcher: Josh Gibson
• Bullpen: Warren Spahn and Tom Seaver (Cy Young and Christy Mathewson don’t make the team).
• DH: Babe Ruth.
• Left and Center Field (“at the wall”): Ted Williams* and Roberto Clemente
• Right Field: Aaron

*I actually contributed to the song. John had shared the song in his e-newsletter soon after it was written, and I reminded him that his original late, great Center Fielder was actually, um, not so late. Thus he made a tweak to add Williams as the third outfielder. We agreed that, based on his reputation, Ty Cobb probably would have had a hard time being eligible for heaven’s baseball team.