Hank Aaron (part five)

His rookie season for the Braves was in 1954 and the team stayed at the beautiful Dixie Grande Hotel on the Manatee River in Bradenton, Florida. The hotel was eight stories tall, surrounded by palm trees and royal poinciana, the smell of the ocean lifted by a gentle breeze. Great big suites for each room, a billiards hall, a private stone patio for its guests and balconies, a garden that grows orange trees and banana trees, a sun parlor with glass windows nearly as big as the walls in which they were framed, and a lounge area mezzanine where three- and five-course meals and fancy cocktail drinks would be ordered and served.

For their down time they could have fished for largemouth bass and bluegill or sat in the shade along the banks and watched snapping turtles and manatees and dolphins under the crystal blue waters. It was like some tropical and majestic paradise where one comes to once one’s made it in this world.

Hank Aaron did not stay there. Arrangements were made for him and teammates Charlie White and Bill Bruton and Jim Pendleton to stay at a crowded and tight-quartered guesthouse built upon stilts and owned by a local school principal beside a funeral parlor on 9th Avenue, a street in the part of town that was called the Negro section. It would take ten more years before he’d stay in the same facilities and be given the same accommodations as his white teammates. It was not new to Aaron, only he was fixing to be new to the world.

There’s a signed playing card from his rookie season that showcases his face in front of a fiery orange background. He’s smiling easy with his head tilted and turned up toward his right as though he’s staring down the gods and his own destiny, and is completely unshaken. A smaller scale of his entire body stands on his shoulders, fielding a ground ball. At the bottom is an unassuming signature that clearly reads his first and last name, and at an auction in 2012 this card sold for over $350,000.

He’d go on to win the World Series against the unbeatable New York Yankees, breaking records while restaurants across the country broke and threw away the plates and glasses that he ate off and drank from, and he’d hit at least twenty homeruns for twenty consecutive seasons, earn three Gold Glove Awards for league’s finest defender and win Most Valuable Player for league’s most incredible and dynamic and prolific ballplayer, make the All-Star team twenty-five times, touch a league all time best 6,865 bases, hit in more runs than anybody in league history with 2,997 and earn the most extra-base hits in league history with 1,447 and do it all with more Grace than anybody since his predecessor, Jackie Robinson.