ATLANTA — The 50th anniversary of Hank Aaron’s 715th home run was marked Monday with announcements of a new statue at Baseball’s Hall of Fame and a new commemorative stamp from the U.S. Postal Service.
Meanwhile, baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred helped honor Aaron in Atlanta by joining the Braves in announcing the $100,000 endowment of a scholarship at Tuskegee University, a historically Black university in Aaron’s home state of Alabama.
Manfred noted the Henry Louis Aaron Fund, launched by the Braves following Aaron’s death in 2021, and the Chasing the Dream Foundation, created by Aaron and wife Billye, were designed to clear paths for minorities in baseball and to encourage educational opportunities.
“I got to know Hank later in his life and he had that amazing presence that the great ones usually have, and he was undoubtedly a force for change in our society,” Manfred said at the Atlanta History Center, where a new exhibit honoring Aaron was unveiled.
“I’m sure that commitment to improving the life of others was in part a product of what he went through as a player. Hank’s legacy goes way beyond baseball.”
The exhibit will remain open through the 2025 All-Star Game in Atlanta.
Billye Aaron attended the unveiling of the exhibit and spoke in a video about Aaron’s record-breaking homer in 1974. She said while watching from her seat near the field, she was upset to see two 17-year-old fans, Britt Gaston and Cliff Courtenay, run onto the diamond and join Aaron as he ran around the bases.
“It just made me angry,” Billye Aaron said, adding she thought the young fans were “stealing his thunder” but noted her husband was not upset.
“If I had been Henry running around the bases, I would have given them more than an elbow,” she said.
Baseball’s Hall of Fame will unveil a bronze statue of Hank Aaron on May 23 on the first floor of its museum in Cooperstown, New York.