A short (porch) story: Remembering Hank Aaron’s homer at Sacramento’s Hughes Stadium
Hank Aaron stopped by here once, summer of ’75.
They might still be looking for the pitch he devoured, bouncing across the railroad tracks in legend and lore.
Aaron died Friday at 86, but he lives on in memory for his ability to hit a baseball, in Milwaukee, Atlanta, Sacramento or anywhere. He also lives on for his class and dignity, which shone through in his pursuit of the home run record held by Babe Ruth, amid racism and death threats.
Less than a year after he eclipsed Ruth with his 715th home run, as an Atlanta Brave and with Sacramento’s Dusty Baker in awe on deck, Aaron was here to slug some more. Aaron only played a few innings here on June 5, 1975, but was the most renowned baseball figure to ever step into Hughes Stadium on the campus of Sacramento City College.
The venue was built in 1928 to host football games, track meets, midget-car races, some boxing and concerts. But baseball?
It was an odd look and feel in a horseshoe stadium that measured 232 feet down the left-field line, 18 feet below minor-league minimum standards, and there was a 40-foot tall screen. The dimensions and punchlines were the very definition of the mid 1970s Sacramento Solons, the Triple-A feeder to the Milwaukee Brewers.
Aaron was traded to the Brewers before the 1975 season to ride out his remarkable career. He was 41 when the Brewers played the Solons in that exhibition game. The Hammer did not participate in batting practice, maybe because there might have been a budget on how many baseballs the Solons were allowed to lose.
Aaron led off the game with a routine popup to centerfield. In the third, the crowd of 12,683 studied Aaron’s every move, baseball’s home-run king wearing his familiar jersey No. 44. Aaron clubbed it out over the left-field net, not even 300 feet, quite possibly the easiest homer of his career.
That’s right. The ball didn’t bounce along the railroad tracks because it did not exit the stadium. It landed in the lap of a young Sacramento couple.
‘The lottery in their laps’
Jim Jenkins knows because he tracked that couple down on that warm night. Jenkins covered the Solons and a lot of everything else for the Sacramento Union in those days before closing out his long career with The Bee.
“It was like the Lottery dropped in their laps, they were so excited,” Jenkins said Friday, hopeful he might still find their names in his stack of archived notes. “Hank Aaron’s chances were great to hit the ball to the Western Pacific Railroad tracks, where kids used to wait for a ball to clear the wall. Hank’s wasn’t a grand blast.”
There is more to this tale.
“As I recall, the pitcher was asked to throw an 80-mph fastball so Hank Aaron could pop it over the screen,” said Greg Van Dusen on Friday, the Roseville resident and the one-time do-all for the Solons, including public relations. “Yes, Hank Aaron was here. People were tremendously excited. But the last thing Aaron wanted to do was play in that rinky-dink facility, where pitchers hurt their neck looking at their pitches go.”
The Solons enjoyed the better outing against the Brewers. They rocked Ed Sprague for four straight home runs in the third inning that led to a 13-4 Sacramento victory, improving their sagging record to 18-37.
As for the meatball pitch? Medium rare with all the fixings, please.
“The story behind the story was that the pitcher, Kevin Kobel, was taken aside and told not to embarrass the greatest home run hitter of all time,” Jenkins said. “He was told to groove one. In other words, serve it sunny-side up. We went to Kobel after the game. He was steaming. He wanted to strike out the greatest home run hitter. He was ordered to do the other, or else.”
Jenkins added, “Kobel’s postgame interview was conditional, for fear of getting in hot water with the brass. Any quotes or attribution to him he would deny. So, we played ball and protected him.”
It wasn’t a titanic blast, but people were excited to see it because it was Hank Aaron. This was a slice of the big time, 10 years before the Kings arrived from Sacramento.
The Aaron thrill had to be the same sort of charge as when Wilt Chamberlain and the Warriors played three regular-season games at Sacramento High School in 1964-65. Wilt played in two, scoring 46 and 45 and scarfing down a large cake from a nearby bakery before the game and at halftime, washed down with a gallon of milk, for a sugar-intake jolt.
Aaron also chowed down in Sacramento. He retreated to the clubhouse in the fifth inning to dig into a ham sandwich and a beer, per Bee reports. He did not do any postgame interviews.
Aaron hit his 755th and final home run on July 20, 1976, in Milwaukee. He retired as a 25-time All-Star, from the most modest of beginnings. One of eight children growing up in Alabama, Aaron earned $200 a month his early days in the Negro American League. The Giants, then in New York, and Braves sent Aaron telegrams offering Major League Baseball contracts.
Aaron said years later, “I had the Giants contract in my hand, but the Braves offered $50 a month more. That’s the only thing that kept Willie Mays and me from being teammates — fifty dollars.”
Had Aaron signed with the Giants, who knows how it all goes. He wouldn’t play in Sacramento one summer night, most likely.
That a breaking-down, aging Aaron played that exhibition spoke of his character.
“Hank is a very accommodating man,” Brewers manager Del Crandall told the media before that 1975 game at Hughes. “He shouldn’t be playing tonight, but he didn’t want to disappoint all of these fans.”
