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When Aaron first came up with the Braves, he was a notorious bad-ball hitter. On one occasion, he reached out and poked a high outside pitch over the wall and then was called out for having stepped beyond the batter's box to hit the ball. No more. Now, he says, he has to discipline himself "to wait for good pitches. I eventually get them, but I have to be patient."
More perhaps than any other hitter in the league, Aaron has the time to look over a pitch hi the half-second or so that it takes to reach the plate. Blessed with wrists eight inches around−as thick as the business end of his 35-in., 34-oz. bat−he has the strength to lean into a pitch and then, if it is not to his liking, snap his bat back at the last possible instant. It is an advantage measured in milliseconds, but it is one reason why Aaron does not strike out as often as most other long-ball hitters. "It's fantastic how long he can look at a pitch before he decides whether to swing," says former Teammate Warren Spahn, now a pitching coach. "It's as good as giving him an extra strike."
Aaron wisely refuses to give advice on hitting because "I really can't describe my way to anyone. Just be quick with your hands and your belly button." Adds Bill Lucas, director of the Braves' farm system: "When we are teaching young players to hit, Hank Aaron is not the example we use."
In his matter-of-fact way, Aaron admits to having an encyclopedic knowledge of pitchers. "The moment I leave the dugout," he says, "I'm concentrating on that pitcher. I never take my eye off him. If I see a pitcher once, I'll never forget the date or place. If I see him more than once, I can tell you exactly what kind of pitcher he is. At the end of the season, I can tell you who I hit every home run off of."
Aaron's overall cool on the field borders on the comatose. He rarely if ever argues with an umpire. When he strikes out, he walks impassively back to the dugout, places his bat in the rack, puts his helmet on the shelf and quietly sits down or steps into the clubhouse ramp-way to smoke a cigarette. When patrolling leftfield, he never runs faster than he has to, never throws the ball harder than is necessary. Even so, his minimum is good enough to have won him three Golden Glove awards as the National League's best fielder at his position. When asked why he does not attempt the flashy Willie Mays type plays, he says, "I'm pacin' myself."
Rag Balls. When he was a boy, the third of eight children, Henry's pace never varied. Every day, his mother Estella recalls, he and his brothers* made a beeline for the baseball diamond a block away from the family's one-story frame house in Toulminville, a black section of Mobile. But never on Sunday; Estella ruled baseball unfit for the Sabbath. Father Herbert, then a $75-a-week rivet bucker for a shipbuilding firm, kept his boys supplied with homemade baseball gloves and rag balls tied together with shoestrings. "When Hank was a youngster," recalls his father, "I carried him over to watch Jackie Robinson play an exhibition game in Mobile. Hank told me he would be up in the major leagues with Robinson before Jackie was through. He was too."