The spring of 1954 was a memorable season. After seven years of fighting, the French were ready to pull out of Viet Nam. Gamal Abdel Nasser took over as Premier of Egypt. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. And on an April afternoon when the Army-McCarthy hearings were dominating network television, a slender black teen-ager from Mobile, Ala., named Henry Louis Aaron hit his first major league home run.
The world has turned. New wars have been fought and settled, dictatorships established and overthrown, but Hank Aaron endures. The wonder is not only his staying power but his amazing consistency, which has won the Atlanta Braves outfielder 14 major-league records. Even so, it is his relentless pursuit of the record that has made him at age 39 the single most conspicuous figure in American sports. Last week, 20 seasons older, 30 Ibs. heavier and 2,953 games more experienced than when he hit home run No. 1, Hammerin' Hank drove No. 710 over the left-centerfield wall at Atlanta Stadium. Going into the weekend, with 13 games remaining on the schedule, he was within suspenseful reach of what is being billed as the greatest moments in sports history: the instants when he hits Nos. 714 and 715 to tie and then break Babe Ruth's home-run record.
Flesh and Blood. On one level, Aaron's reach for the record is a consummate professional's personal quest for immortality. For years he was underrated, and that still rankles. "I've always read Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Roger Maris−then Hank Aaron. I've worked awfully hard to get my name up front. I've waited for my time, and it's just now coming," he told TIME Correspondent Paul Witteman.
Aaron's pursuit of the Babe's magic number has other meanings as well. Ruth was larger than life, (see box next page) a carefree superman in a giddy era. Aaron cannot depose him no matter how many home runs he hits. But Aaron, by comparison merely a flesh-and-blood Everyman, demonstrates that a hero need not be mythic.
Ruth used the home run to transform baseball. In the process, he made the homer a part of American culture, a symbol of the country's affection for the fast, decisive stroke that can determine the outcome of a contest. Aaron, Ruth's heir if not his rival, has kept that drama alive. Baseball may no longer be the national pastime. But when a slugger steps into the box to face a good pitcher, it is man-to-man combat, and the possibility of a home run still carries excitement. With Aaron, year in and year out, the expectation has always been present. Now, with the record so close at hand, there is an exquisite tension.
Sleeping Lion. Will he or won't he do it this season? In spring training, Aaron himself allowed that at best he had only an outside chance. At an age when most of his contemporaries are breaking into the insurance business or learning microphone manners, he confessed that "I can't play every day anymore. It's not that you get tired, but your body just doesn't come back as fast as it did. You think you can swing the bat, but you're just a fraction off. The balls you used to hit out of the ballpark you're fouling off. I need more sleep now. Sometimes I'll lie down at 9 p.m. and sleep till 9 a.m."