Legendary Braves slugger Hank Aaron leaves legacy beyond baseball

Atlanta Braves’ Hank Aaron, center, who became the ninth player in Major League history to get 3,000 hits, kisses a baseball alongside Famer Stan Musial and Braves owner Bill Bartholomay, in Cincinnati.

Gene Smith / Associated Press

Baseball legend Hank Aaron died Friday at the age of 86.

Aaron, a Black man, was one of the game’s most consistent sluggers, despite the racism that he faced throughout his time in the game – from his earliest days in the minor leagues to the biggest night of his career  – to the night he became baseball’s all-time home run leader.

Henry Louis Aaron was born in 1934 in Mobile, Alabama, one of seven children. As a child, he remembered chopping wood with his father, looking up to see an airplane overhead, and aspiring to one day become a pilot. But his father had his doubts.