TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

Today, the great Henry Aaron was displaced from a position he's held in the record book for fifty years. Here's a hint: he set it during his rookie year. Before reading on, turn away from your screen and think on this just a bit.

Here's another hint: it was broken today by another rookie, making his major league debut in Houston for the San Francisco Giants. His name is David Aardsma, and with his apperance in an official major league game, he displaces Hammerin' Hank in the initial position, alphabetically, in the all-time list of major leaguers. Aardsma came in in relief for the Giants against the Astros, and with the game safely past the fifth inning, the ink has dried on his initial entry into the great unified reference work of baseball's statistical record.

I got my first MacMillan (aka The Baseball Encylopedia) in 1973, when Aaron's homer line read 673, Willie Mays was still active and technically still threatening the Babe himself, and most players were but a rumour until you happened to see them on the Game of the Week. As a kid, it seemed to me that that mysterious coincidence of being first in the books was a prophecy that Aaron would end up being the best, that he'd pass Ruth and go even further beyond. That was all I knew about Aaron then: the lines in his Baseball Encyclopedia entry.

I confess I once read through the whole thing, from A to Z, during one particularly boring summer. Who knows how many tiny facts of trivia became lodged in the old cranium from doing that? Times have changed: Baseball Reference dot com has displaced for me even thumbing through Total Baseball most times I want to check somebody out, and database searches know no magical, arbitrary orderings such as alphabetical, chronological, height, weight, most homers, or least at-bats. Aaron is still, in many ways, vastly underappreciated, and I'm ever so slightly sad to see him taken out of that magic first slot in the reference works.

I was fortunate enough to finally get to see Aaron play in person, during his final stint in Milwaukee with the AL Brewers. I saw a Hank Aaron homer, which must've been about number 749 or so. He may not have been the player he once was, but the skeleton, the ghost, of that MacMillan entry became flesh when I first saw Aaron step into the box, and since then I've enjoyed fleshing out so many more players through experiencing them first-hand when possible, and when not, through the vivid accounts of others, including so many articles in the pages of the Diamond Angle. Still, there's just something mysterious about that first entry: Aaron, Henry. All-time home run king.

David Aardsma appears to be a neat kid, bright, easygoing enough to take the rookie ribbing well, and understanding his great good fortune at being in the majors less than a year out of college. I wonder if he'll ever appreciate having his name above Henry Aaron's for the rest of time? I wish him well.

posted by The Crank 7:49 PM