Probably my first memory. My first years were in a slum called "blackbottom" on the Chattanooga, Tennessee and Rossville, Georgia border. Those sirens just would never stop. Get in the house, uncle Bob has just been shot! Hide, uncle Boyd is being chased!



We moved when I was six to an area called East Lake, about four miles away, just inside Chattanooga. But the terror there was not outside the house, it was inside. My dad was an extremely violent drunk. He would do things like throwing one of my sisters on the floor and stomping her. He would beat me so hard, I would lose my breath. I remember, at about 7 years old, hiding my little sister, Sissy, in the woods,or in the basement to try to protect her.

I remember my mother would sometimes baby-sit up to 10 or 12 kids, plus do ironing for people for extra income. I remember one time, late at night, her begging my dad not to shoot her. I remember several times, as she was battered, I would sneak into the kitchen to grab an empty beer bottle to hit dad, but never got the courage. Agencies for battered women were not an option in those days.

I remember the first time I heard of the Atlanta Braves. I was in the sixth grade at East Lake Elementary School, in Mr. Bowlins class. He let the class watch the Braves play the Mets in the National League playoff game.

That summer, in one of my rare good memories of my father, he took my brother and I to a place called Nik-A-Jack for fishing. A man close to us was listening to a ball game on a radio. He told me the Atlanta Braves were playing the Reds. I remember the Braves lost. I don't remember what possessed me, but the next night, I listened to them over the radio.

I was getting beat up almost everyday at school. I think dad beating on mom and us turned me into a coward. It just hurt so bad when he would hit. I remember lying in the bedroom, with the big white radio set low, listening to the Braves, as dad was beating mom as she was trying to cook supper. She just kept getting back up, trying to make sure we were fed. I would close my eyes, and pretend it was not happening. I convinced myself that the Braves were the reality: my pretend reality.

I absolutely loved baseball. My mom would break off old mop or broom handles, and when dad would come home, I would go up to the back alley, which was filled with gravel, and hit rocks. I would always pretend I was the Braves. Funny, I don't recall them ever losing.

I remember it seemed every time Hank Aaron came up to bat, in my fantasy games, he would always hit a home run. Just maybe I caught on to something before steroids! As the rock would clear the fence at the end of the alley, I would pretend I was Ernie Johnson or Milo Hamilton, the radio announcers: There's a drive, way back, that ball is going, going, gone! The hammer has just hit another one! In reality, the Braves were 76-86 that year.

I would spend hours in the front yard playing catch with some of the neighbors, John Stuff and Archie Layne. Sometimes, they could hear my mother screaming. Of course, I was always Phil Niekro. Seems he never lost, just as Aaron always homered. The sounds from the house were not reality: Aaron was. He was my pretend reality.

I have to this day only been to two Braves games. The first was probably in 1973. The Braves beat the Reds, 11 to 7. I believe there were 5 home runs hit, three by the Braves. I got to see Johnny Bench hit one, but my biggest dream came true: the Hammer hit I believe number 687, though I'm not sure exactly. I will always be so grateful to the boy scouts for that trip.

I read 'I Had A Hammer' about two years ago. I have always felt that Hank Aaron was the greatest baseball player ever, not only by statistics, but he was the consummate gentleman. If you were to ever read this book, you would find out that Aaron was by no means perfect, but he was very, very honest. How he managed to break the record of Babe Ruth, I'll never know. How, with all that hatred, and fear of being shot?

I imagine Aaron, being the true gentleman he is, would agree that America is blessed with many heroes. Military, Firefighters, Police, and so many others. I wonder if he will ever know what he meant to the sons of single moms and battered women?

But Henry Aaron was THE sports hero. Not only to the African-American community, but to one skinny white kid, of whom he became the pretend reality in a house that was a torture chamber.

My dad did accept Christ, and he changed so dramatically. It is so unbelievable how lovable he became. Everyday, when I was in the army, he would put the flag outside, and salute it. I remember, about a year or two before he died, we were in a crowded ICU waiting room, as my mother was very ill. All the seats were taken, and he got up to give an elderly black man his seat. Before he had accepted Christ, he was one of the biggest racists I ever knew. The thought even goes through my mind today: "God, if Hank could only be here to witness this!"

The last check my dad ever wrote was for his church tithe. He loved God, his church, his family, but he learned to love, regardless of race. If he changed, isn't there someway we all can? We just elected our first African-American president.

My biggest dream is to someday meet Hank Aaron. It would probably be silly to see a 50 year old man cry, but if this one skinny white kid could ever explain to him just how important he was, maybe it would make it all worth it for all the HELL Aaron went through.

I remember a sports headline in the Chattanooga News Free-Press: Reds 8, Aaron 3. He will always be "The Hammer". Thanks, Hank, for being my pretend reality through those years in the "torture chamber".