Last week I wrote HANK AARON IS MY HOME RUN KING.
Immediately, I was flooded with email. Some agreeing, others not, but truth be
told, as long as you're not vicious, I love reading the mail. Then I got one from Carmine Frosina. What he sent me blew me away. It was a scan of the actually newspaper when Hank Aaron tied Babe Ruth at 714 home runs.
I was interested… so I asked about it. How he got
a hold of it? Carmine’s story is a cute one…. Enjoy this, I did.
I was home when the 714
game was on television. There are
certain numbers that you always remember…for me, it was 714 and 61. I remember
when it happened and I was happy for Hank when he tied the record of 714 because of what he went through to
get to that point and the nasty mail that he had gotten after this
milestone.
My father
owned a town candy store. So, the next day, April 5th, I showed up early at the store. There
it was on the front page. This newspaper is from my own collection.
I should have taken more off the rack but
my dad had to sell them. At 17 years
old, I didn’t want anyone to ever pass any Yankee record ever. That included
when Mark McGwire broke the 62 home run record of Roger Maris in 1998 in front of
the Maris family.
But there I was,
August… 1974 and my mother said, “Do you want to go see Hank Aaron at the
Mall?” I agreed. We went there because he was doing some promotional thing for
Magnavox Televisions. He signed to me…
“To Carmine, best wishes, Hank Aaron.” And to this day, I still have it and will never forget that meeting...
Baseball does that
to people.
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