Baseball Milestones of April 8th

April 8th is the anniversary of two significant Major League baseball events of the past. Forty years ago, on April 8th, 1974, Henry Aaron of the Atlanta Braves broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record with the 715th of his career.  In front of a national television audience, Aaron hit a 1-0 pitch off Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers into the right field bullpen at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium to break the record.

In the run up to this event, Aaron was subjected to death threats and inundated by hate mail, much of it racially motivated.  But Aaron persevered, despite the enormous pressure that went on for about two years as the possibility of his breaking the record increased.  Aaron finished his career with 755 home runs.  Although technically, Barry Bonds now holds the record with 762, there are those of us who unofficially regard Aaron’s steroid free 755 as the true leader.

Just one year after Aaron’s milestone, Frank Robinson became the first African American manager of a big league club.  Robinson took over as a player-manager of the Cleveland Indians and managed his first game on April 8th, 1975.  Like Aaron, Robinson had a Hall of fame career as a player.  Robinson was less successful as a manager (due in part to having taken over some pretty bad ball clubs) but still won over 1000 major league games with four different teams.

On a lighter note, April 7th marked the 25th anniversary of the release of the classic baseball comedy movie Major League starring Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, and Corbin Bernsen, with along with Milwaukee Brewers announcer and sometime actor Bob Uecker.  It’s still a funny movie a quarter century later.