Lest we forget: Hank Aaron

Of course, I should have done this a week ago, but what more can you saw about the latest Hall of Famer to leave us?

There has been an expected uptick in interest and sales of books by and about Aaron, including I Had a Hammer, which he wrote with Lonnie Wheeler, and The Last Hero, Howard Bryant’s excellent portrait, although I don’t necessarily agree with the title. I was talking with a couple of colleagues about who is left to warrant that kind of attention, admiration, and affection. Who’s left, in other words? The only names we could come up with of similar magnitude were Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax, all due respect to all the other great players who are getting up there in years.

Not going to reinvent the wheel here. This is a list of books I compiled for one of Aaron’s birthdays a few years back.

Like several of his contemporaries, the books on Aaron fall into a few timelines: “regular” releases during his playing days; a wave when he was approaching and immediately after attaining the all-time home run record; and more recently in his advanced age.

Representative titles include:

The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, by Howard Bryant (2010)
Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America, by Tom Stanton (2004, the 30th anniversary of the record-breaking home run)
The Hammer: The Best of Hank Aaron from the Pages of Sports Illustrated, edited by Christian Stone (2007)
A Summer Up North: Henry Aaron and the Legend of Eau Claire Baseball, by Jerry Poling (2002)
Home Run: My Life in Pictures, by Aaron with Dick Schaap (1999)
I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story, Aaron with Lonnie Wheeler (1991)
Aaron (Revised Edition), by Aaron with Furman Bisher (1974)
Hank Aaron: One for the Record, by George Plimpton (1974)
Aaron, r.f., Aaron with Bisher (1968)

Pretty sure there hasn’t been one put out by a traditional publisher ( i.e., not self-published) since Bryant’s contribution.

There was also talk of an Aaron biopic several years ago but I haven’t seen anything about the project since. Maybe his passing will serve as an impetus to start it up again. The was a 1996 Peabody Award-winning documentary — Hank: Aaron: Chasing the Dream — written and directed by Michael Tollin which you can watch here (part one) and here (part two), via the University of Georgia website.