On this day, January 22, in 2021: Hammerin' Hank Aaron left the field. He was 86.
Today's memorabilia: In 1982, Hank signed a baseball for me at his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2013, my dog, Scout, destroyed that ball.
Today's missed chance: He tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers when he was 15 and didn't make the cut.
May his memory be a blessing.
Today's other nickname: "pork chops," because "it was the only thing I knew to order off the menu."
Today's Peanuts strip: Schultz did a series of strips commenting on the racist mail Aaron got as he approached Babe Ruth's home run record - http://bit.ly/joeyx317
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Today's quote: "We had breakfast while we were waiting for the rain to stop, and I can still envision sitting with the [Indianapolis] Clowns [Negro League] in a restaurant behind Griffith Stadium and hearing them break all the plates in the kitchen after we finished eating. What a horrible sound. ...
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Even as a kid, the irony of it hit me: here we were in the capital in the land of freedom and equality, and they had to destroy the plates that had touched the forks that had been in the mouths of black men. If dogs had eaten off those plates, they'd have washed them."
/eof
JoeyX