Hank Aaron seems to be a man lost in time. He was never as flashy as Mays, as historic as Robinson, or as white as Mantle and because of all that he gets forgotten when it comes to discussions of the greatest of all time. Aaron was a blue collar ballplayer who treated the game as a job; no basket catches, no stolen home plates, no drunken evenings in the outfield, he just showed up, put in his time and went home. There are no crazy Aaron quotes or outrageous Aaron stories, there is just the work he displayed on the field every game he played. So even though he has a series of stats that even the "greatest" can't hold a candle to, Aaron never seems to climb much higher then 5 or 6 on anyone's greatest baseball player list. I'm sure there is a group of sabermetric nerds somewhere that would love to even take the importance of those stats away from him. He is currently 4th in career runs, 3rd in hits, 10th in doubles, 2nd in home runs (with a huge asterisk next to the guy at number one), and 1st in RBI, all numbers bigger then the men listed above him. The thing is, there is more to the story of Hank Aaron then a list of numbers compiled on a baseball diamond and because he never gets the attention the big names get the rest of the story seems to get lost as well. Which is why Howard Bryant's The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron is an important book for baseball history.
Bryant isn't able to capture the style and grace of Aaron on the field and does very little to argue Aaron was better then his contemporaries other then to say he played with a workman's attitude and to list the numbers I've listed above. Aaron fans must have come to realization by this point that their hero is never going to get attention he deserves. But what Bryant does a wonderful job of doing is paint a detailed picture of the Aaron we never saw on the field and the struggles he faced through out his life. He was a man constantly put between a rock and a hard place, who never seemed to be in a situation where there was a right thing to say or a proper way to act, yet looking back he was always able to handle things with a grace few important American figures could. Bryant talks about Aaron breaking the color barrier in the Florida minor leagues, about him being the key to Atlanta being seen as a progressive Southern city, about conceding his most prized record to a man who went against everything Henry professed as a ball player. These are all stories that will be lost to tales of Jackie Robinson opening the door for black players, pictures of Willy Mays slowing down so he could catch a ball over his shoulder in the World Series, and arguments about the legality of Barry Bonds drug use. Yet, Bryant has done what he could to keep them in perpetuity by elegantly putting them into print.
If you're looking for a wonderfully written book about baseball, this isn't it. Bryant's description of the on-field happenings in Aaron's career is lacking and uninspired. But what Bryant does accomplish is drawing a fair and encompassing portrait of a man history has not been kind to. It isn't all praise, he uncovers the warts along with the awards making it the complete story of arguably the games greatest player.
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