Derek Jeter reflects on Hank Aaron’s death: ‘His impact will continue to be felt’

Derek Jeter was 2 years old when Hank Aaron’s illustrious Major League Baseball career came to an end, but he knows the legacy Aaron holds in the baseball world and what it meant to play the game decades after Aaron’s retirement.

Which makes days like Friday that much tougher.

Aaron died Friday morning. He was 86.

“Hank Aaron was a legendary athlete, icon of the sport and role model for all,” Jeter said in a statement Friday afternoon released by the Marlins. “We will miss him, but his impact will continue to be felt on generations to come.”

That impact on the field is well known. He was a 23-year MLB veteran, playing with the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves from 1954-1974 and then the Milwaukee Brewers from 1975-1976. He was a first-ballot Hall of Famer in 1982, appearing on 406 of 415 ballots. He’s the owner of 755 career home runs, a record that held until 2007. He still holds MLB’s records for career RBI (2,297), total bases (6,856) and extra-base hits (1,477).

But his resolve and impact off the field will carry over far beyond his final stats.

He was the target of racism throughout his career. He received hate mail and death threats as he closed in on Babe Ruth’s home-run record of 714, much of it due to the fact that Ruth was white and Aaron was Black.

“The only reason that some people didn’t want me to succeed was because I was a Black man,” Aaron once said.

But Aaron never backed down and gracefully played a career that spanned across three decades.

“A devoted civil rights activist, his lasting impact will forever be measured well beyond his ‘Hammerin’ Hank’ home run swing,” wrote The Players Alliance, a group of more than 150 active and former Major League Baseball players (and which Jeter is a member as part of the MLB club owner advisory committee), in a statement. “The players that make up the Alliance owe a debt of gratitude for all Hank Aaron did for our game and our country’s movement toward equality. We send our deepest condolences to his family in the wake of his passing.”

And while he was born in Mobile and primarily lived in Atlanta following his playing career, he also owned a home in West Palm Beach. The Braves held spring training at the West Palm Beach Municipal Stadium from 1963 to 1997. The address of the former stadium (now the site of a Home Depot): 755 Hank Aaron Drive.

“When I’m there,” Aaron told the Palm Beach Post in 2010, “I feel at home.”

More reaction

▪ Barry Bonds, who surpassed Aaron’s home run record on Aug. 7, 2007: “Hank Aaron — thank you for everything you ever taught us, for being a trailblazer through adversity and setting an example for all of us African American ball players who came after you. Being able to grow up and have the idols and role models I did, help shape me for a future I could have never dreamed of. Hank’s passing will be felt by all of us who love the game and his impact will forever be cemented in my heart.”

▪ MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark: “This is a profoundly sad day for baseball and indeed for our entire country. On the field, off the field, for 23 remarkable playing seasons and beyond, Hank Aaron was a Hall of Famer in every sense of the phrase. Generations of players have walked, and will continue to walk, on a trail that Hank Aaron blazed with his determination, courage, singular talent and grace. We send our deepest sympathies to his family, friends and legion of fans throughout the game.”

▪ MLB commissioner Rob Manfred: “Hank Aaron is near the top of everyone’s list of all-time great players. His monumental achievements as a player were surpassed only by his dignity and integrity as a person. Hank symbolized the very best of our game, and his all-around excellence provided Americans and fans across the world with an example to which to aspire. His career demonstrates that a person who goes to work with humility every day can hammer his way into history — and find a way to shine like no other.”