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 By all accounts, George Herman Ruth was a drunk. A womanizer. Not a particularly good teammate. But Babe Ruth hit home runs, and so they named a candy bar after him. Except they didn't. The candy bar was named for Grover Cleveland's daughter Ruth. An easy mistake to make, though in the late twenties and early thirties as Babe Ruth was hitting the ball out of ballparks across the country it probably didn't hurt sales much. 

Henry Louis Aaron, by all accounts, was a pretty quiet fellow. Married twice, but with no great drama. He was an exceptional teammate. He hit home runs. A lot of them. Enough that they named a candy bar after him. Except they didn't. Oh Henry! was another chocolate caramel nut confection that was named back in the twenties for some other guy named Henry. And sales only went up in the mid nineteen seventies. 

Babe Ruth was a star, and though his departure from the Boston Red Sox brought on a curse that kept that team from winning a World Series for nearly one hundred years. The New York Yankees, by contrast, won four with Mister Ruth, and then a whole bunch more afterward.

Henry "Hammerin' Hank" Aaron was on one World Series winning team. That was in 1954. It was twenty years later that he hit the home run that broke Babe Ruth's record. A stunning achievement, given all the voices that insisted that could never happen. It did. But not before Mister Aaron received an award from the United States Postal Service for receiving more mail than any single person in a year. Sadly, mixed in with all that fan mail were death threats and intimidation intended to sow fear into this black man who dared to challenge the legacy of Babe (white) Ruth. There were times, by some accounts, that Hank Aaron feared that he might not live long enough to break the home run record for Major League Baseball. 

He did. On April 8, 1974, he hit number seven hundred fifteen for the Atlanta Braves in front of a capacity crowd and a national television audience. Muhamad Ali said that Hank Aaron was, “The only man I idolize more than myself." 

Hammerin' Hank retired with seven hundred fifty-five career dingers, and was enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He lived long enough to see his record broken, by Barry Bonds and steroids. Not that he would ever have made a fuss about that. Because that's the kind of man he was. 

Hank Aaron went to the Field of Dreams this past week. He stomped on the base paths of Terra, and he will be missed. And remembered. Candy bars not withstanding.