SPORTS
Hank Aaron, Dead at 86, Set Home Run Record Amidst Hate
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With a single swing of a baseball bat through a misty Atlanta evening in 1974, a fast, gracious stroke that sent a ball soaring over the fence in left center field and knocked Babe Ruth right out of the record books, Hank Aaron—who died in his sleep on Jan. 22 at the age of 86—offered America nothing less than a remedy for its ills. He offered dignity and commitment over putrid cynicism, courage in the face of hatred.
The venom that Aaron faced in the early 1970s was strong as a he closed in on Babe Ruth’s then all-time career record of 714 home runs. Aaron received so much mail—much of it hate mail, filled with death threats—that the U.S. Postal Service gave him a plaque for the flood of correspondence, according to CNN.
“I hope you don’t break the Babe’s record,” read one note. “How do I tell me kids that a [slur] did it.” This note was signed: “KKK (Forever).” “You are not going to break his record established by the great Babe Ruth if I can help it,” read another. “Whites are far more superior than [slur] . . . My gun is watching your every black move.”
In the wake of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Aaron’s chase for the record laid bare the raw racism prevalent in the early 1970s, and which stubbornly persists today. “Hank Aaron’s home run record exposed America,” says Harry Edwards, the famed sociologist and activist who helped organize the Black power salute at the 1968 Olympics, “and the steepness of the hill to be climbed.”
But despite the deep personal toll the chase laid on Aaron, whose family was also threatened during the ordeal, there he stood on the night of April 8, 1974, bearing down on a fastball from Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing, putting 715 into the books. Nearly one in four American television sets were tuned into watch Aaron make history. As he approached second base on his home run trot, stoic — Aaron might have smiled slightly — he slapped hands with Dodgers second baseman Davey Lopes, who offered congratulations. As he rounded the base, two white young men, who seemed to appear out of nowhere, ran alongside Aaron. His bodyguard, up in the stands, considered reaching for the pistol in his binocular case. If Aaron, with tensions so high in Atlanta after receiving so many vitriolic threats, had slugged the teens, reasonable people would have understood why. But the pair just patted him on the chest and shoulder. Aaron kept his calm, continuing his march, undeterred, towards home plate.
“It is over,” said legendary Dodgers broadcaster/poet Vin Scully. “And for the first time in a long time that poker face of Aaron shows tremendous relief … What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol.”
“I’d just like to thank God it’s over with,” Aaron, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002 from George W. Bush, said afterwards.
The racism he faced in the run up to the record might have darkened Aaron’s joy, but, for him, bitterness never lingered. He faced indignities all his life, growing up in segregated Mobile, Ala. “As a young boy, Henry would watch as his father was forced to surrender his place in line at the general store to any whites who entered,” wrote author Howard Bryant in his 2010 biography The Last Hero: A Life Of Henry Aaron.
“When I was growing up in Mobile, Ala., on a little dirt street, I remember my mother about 6 or 7 o’clock in the afternoon. You could hardly see and I’d be trying to throw a baseball and she’d say ‘Come here, come here!’ And I’d say, ‘For what?’ She said, ‘Get under the bed,’” Aaron said in a 2014 interview with CNN. “Then the KKK would march by, burn a cross and go on about their business and then she (my mother) would say, ‘You can come out now.’ Can you imagine what this would do to the average person? Here I am, a little boy, not doing anything, just catching a baseball with a friend of mine and my mother telling me, ‘Go under the bed.’”
As he emerged as a prospect while playing shortstop for the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro Leagues, at the age of 18, even scouting reports were laden with racism. “Negro ball players as a whole are front runners in my estimation,” read one report. “When ahead they look very good and very bad when behind. However this boy looks very good and if he can make the plays to his left and his right he could be the answer. I feel that he has the ability.”
In 1954, Aaron made his major league debut with the Milwaukee Braves and won Rookie of the Year honors. At six-feet-tall and with a slender frame, Aaron did not fit the prototype of the burly Ruthian slugger; much of his power derived from the speed of his wrists. Throughout his 23-year career, he displayed remarkable consistency, smacking between 24 and 47 home runs in 19 straight seasons. He hit 40 or more home runs in eight different seasons. He hit 44 in 1957 at the age of 23, when the Braves won the World Series, and he hit 40 in 1973 when he was 39. While Barry Bonds broke his home run record in 2007, under suspicion of steroid use, Aaron remains the all-time leader in career RBIs and total bases.
Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, his first year on the ballot, Aaron spent much of his post-baseball life working in the Atlanta Braves front office and building a philanthropic legacy that includes his Chasing The Dream Foundation, which awards scholarships mostly to students attending small historically Black college and universities.
Even amidst the darkest days of the home run chase, Aaron sent letters to fans, thanking them profusely for supporting him. And while his ordeal brought out the worst in some people, his courage also taught millions about the value of acceptance, and respect for the challenges facing many Black Americans. Aaron paved the way for the embrace of a new generation of African-American athletes.
“He was told, ‘don’t take the field or be shot,’” says Edwards. “But he played, in stadiums filled with 50,000 people, out in the open by himself. With that kind of pressure on him, he still got it done. His courage and commitment speaks to the American saga. Over a period of time, this country came to see the broader contribution that Hank Aaron had made. Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, all of these athletes came through the door that Hank Aaron opened.”
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Japan’s Mone Inami came up a stroke short in her bid to win gold on home soil, finishing a shot back of world No. 1 Nelly Korda of the U.S. in the final round of the women’s golf tournament on Saturday at Kasumigaseki Country Club.
Inami defeated New Zealand’s Lydia Ko in a playoff to claim silver.
Inami fired a stellar six-under 65 in the final round to put herself in contention, but Korda, the overnight leader, was steady throughout and finished with a 69 in her final round. Inami wavered on the final hole, coming home with a bogey to end on 16-under. Korda, playing in the group behind her, made par to secure the gold medal at 17-under.
In the playoff, Inami made par on the 18th hole and watched as Ko’s par save slipped just past the hole.
India’s Aditi Ashok, the world No. 200, was a surprise fourth-place finisher.
Long before Tokyo 2020 was saddled with cost overruns, scandals over sexism and fears it would turn into a COVID-19 super-spreader event, anti-Olympics activists were already calling the whole thing a disaster.
That was why one year before the pandemic-hit Games were originally slated to open in late July 2020, anti-Olympic activists convened in Japan for the first ever global summit of “NOlympians”, as those opposed to the Games are known.
The pow-wow of NOlympians signalled that once ad hoc localised opposition to Olympic events had gone global.
“We shouldn’t see the anti-[Olympics] movements [as] being isolated and divided according to nations and cities,” said Hiroki Ogasawara, a professor in sociology and cultural studies at Japan’s Kobe University, “because the protest is already worldwide and the Olympics inevitably involve global scale wrongdoings, too.”
Dozens of activists from host cities past (London, Rio de Janeiro and Pyeongchang, South Korea) and future (Paris and Los Angeles) were joined in the Japanese capital by those bracing for a bid by their cities, including Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta.
“That was a pivotal moment,” Jules Boykoff, a participant and professor of politics and government at Pacific University in Oregon in the United States told Al Jazeera. What Boykoff previously called “a moment of movements” had blossomed into a transnational coalition with staying power.
Boykoff, an Olympian turned critic, says that because the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is “a multibillion-dollar behemoth” those opposed to it have realised, “the only way to fight is to become more mobile with their dissent”.
Japan has held four Olympic events in 50 years, the most of any Asian country despite strong opposition because of the cost and their social and environmental impacts [File: Robert F Butaky/AP Photo]Founded in 1894, the IOC is a non-profit that serves as the governing body of Olympics committees in each of its member countries with a mission to distribute the billions in revenue from broadcasting and marketing to sports development. Its executive board is formed of members drawn from the global business elite.
‘Olympic Disasters’
In Asia, Japan has hosted the most Olympic events – the Games that kicked off on July 23 were its fourth in 50 years.
While the 1964 Games have generally been portrayed positively – a showcase of the technological prowess and design brilliance of post-war Japan and its debut on the world stage – not everyone holds such a rosy view of later Olympics.
Of the two main anti-Games groups spawned by Tokyo 2020, one is called Okotowa Link, which means “Olympic Disasters”.
The Japanese activists had a litany of concerns concerning the event from the demolition of affordable housing to the removal of street sleepers and the transformation of the world-famous Tsukiji fish market into a parking lot for the National Stadium.
In an era where activism is increasingly global and finding momentum online – from the #MeToo movement to Fridays for Future and Black Lives Matter – it is hard to recall the days when grassroots organising spread one leaflet at a time.
That was how Helen Jefferson Lenskyj and her fellow activists at Bread Not Circuses got their start in the late 1980s when Toronto vied first for the 1996 Games and then for the 2008 event. While her city’s repeated bids called for a sustained campaign, Lenskyj notes how the anti-Olympics movement has since grown.
“It’s definitely gathered strength,” said Lenskyj, now professor emerita of social justice education at the University of Toronto. “With social media and more effective use of the internet, the growing problem of huge debts and expensive venues, the legacy that never materialised, there’s growing disillusionment.”
The Canadian anti-Games activists were the first to launch the Poverty Olympics Torch Relay, in which the torch is fashioned from a toilet plunger. And an annual NOlympics day was marked every late June to galvanise opposition worldwide.
There were protests against the Summer Games when they were held in Greece in 2004 with demonstrators concerned about security measures [File: Louisa Gouliamaki/EPA]The Games’ human costs, including the massive disruption to the lives of residents and heightened police surveillance, stand in stark contrast with the corporate interests of the Olympics boosters. Typically, they are the business and political elites who have the most to gain from brand sponsorships, white-elephant building projects and lucrative service contracts.
“I call this trickle-up economics,” said Boykoff. “It’s a massive economic juggernaut; the sports are incidental.”
‘Soft power’
Over the past few years, citizens have become increasingly resistant to hosting the sporting extravaganza, with some Western countries putting the decision to voters in a referendum.
One by one, potential bid cities have been eliminated by “no” votes from Boston in the US to Krakow in Poland.
In 2015, in the leadup to the IOC awarding the 2022 Winter Games, only two candidate cities were left standing: Almaty and Beijing.
Authoritarian countries have long seen the Games as a form of “soft power”, while the IOC has sought to frame the event as a force for good that transcends politics.
In 2001, when Beijing was awarded the 2008 Summer Olympics despite concerns over China’s human rights record, the IOC claimed hosting would help usher in an era of greater freedom.
Seven years later, artist Ai Weiwei, the man who had helped design the centrepiece Bird’s Nest stadium, was persecuted by authorities for his political activism, and Beijing won its bid for the 2022 Winter Games three weeks after a nationwide round-up of human rights lawyers and their staff.
With less than seven months to go, Beijing’s mass imprisonment of Uighur Muslims and its crackdown in Hong Kong are fuelling calls from Europe and North America for a boycott.
Meanwhile, the dwindling number of cities prepared to bid for the event has spurred the IOC to act. Its Agenda 2020 called for transparency, sustainability and flexibility. Critics, however, say the organisation is incapable of genuine reform.
“The IOC has a democratic deficit,” said Boykoff, adding that it was ruled “with an iron fist.”
China celebrates being awarded the 2022 Winter Olympics, but there are calls for a boycott in response to the crackdowns in Xinjiang and Hong Kong [File: Ng Han Guan/AP Photo]In response to the rising NOlympics backlash, the IOC has accelerated the process for naming host cities.
In an unprecedented move in 2017, it doled out a twin award to the remaining candidates: giving the 2024 Summer Games to Paris and 2028 to Los Angeles.
And just before the Tokyo Olympics got under way, the IOC announced the host for 2032 – Brisbane in Australia, the only contender. Previously, the host city was selected only seven years before the Games were due to start.
For now, activists’ rallying cry of “NOlympics anywhere” may seem a long shot, but as the memory of two weeks of sporting spectacle begins to fade and Tokyo assesses the Games’ longer-term effect, it seems likely the rumblings of discontent that follow the IOC will only grow – as will the movement.
“The anti-Olympics campaign has a significant impact in raising local residents’ consciousness on what human rights will be violated and what they would have to suffer to have the Olympics,” Lenskyj said.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics have been plagued by defiled graves, bribes, lies, outbreaks of Covid-19, colossal mistakes and mysterious deaths.
At the massively expensive Olympic Stadium, when they light the Olympic flame on Friday night, reflect on one thing. The architects originally forgot to put a place for the stand in their designs, which wasn’t noticed until 2016.
Even the opening ceremonies have been a fiasco before they started. The original music composer had to resign after his history of gleefully torturing the disabled became an issue. The former comedian turned director of the pre-game show was fired because of his past Holocaust jokes.
There are reports that the new music will be provided by an ultra-nationalist composer who denies the existence of comfort women and the Nanjing Massacre. That may not go over well with Japan’s neighbors.
It seems like the games are cursed – and former Prime Minister Taro Aso has said so publicly. If something can go wrong it will. Is it supernatural bad luck or just the karma of the organizers?
At Asia Times we’ve decided to chronicle the series of unfortunate events that led us up to this day of days, not necessarily in chronological order, but in a way that you can meditate on the mandala of misfortune that is the Tokyo 2020 Five-Ring Circus. Can things get better?
Will the opening of the Olympics be prying open an already damaged Pandora’s Box or will it somehow release “fighting spirit” to save the day?
The Big Lie (2013)
Shortly, after taking office in 2012, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in his second time at bat, began pushing to have Tokyo host the 2020 Olympics. Naoki Inose, the governor of Tokyo, had his back.
At a September general meeting of the International Olympic Committee, Abe made a bold appeal to host the games. When concerns were raised about the Fukushima nuclear meltdown that had happened less than two years earlier, Abe confidently said, “Fukushima is under control.”
It wasn’t and it isn’t now. In two years, Japan will start dumping radioactive water that has been piling up on site into our oceans. The clean-up will take decades.
The bribes (2013)
It wasn’t until 2019, that it was reported that French prosecutors have investigated the head of the Japan Olympic Committee, for bribing former members of the IOC. At least two million dollars was allegedly spent buying off former IOC officials so that they lobbied African nations to vote for Japan’s 2013 Olympic bid.
Reuters later reports that even more millions were spent currying favor and paid out to a former executive of Dentsu, Japan’s incredibly powerful advertising agency.
Speaking of bribes, Tokyo Governor Inose, who helped secure the Olympics, was forced to step down after being accused of accepting a 50,000,000 yen ($450,000) contribution from a medical consortium. Just like Abe, he wouldn’t survive in office long enough to boast about the success of the Games.
Skeletons in the closet (2013)
In November of 2019, it was finally reported that 187 human bodies had been excavated between 2013 and 2015 from the construction site of Tokyo’s new Olympic stadium. The bad news (and the bones) had been covered up for years.
Apparently, the Olympic organizers had built over an Edo era cemetery. Did anyone do the proper Buddhist rituals to quell the spirits of the dead? Nobody knows.
Like the movie Poltergeist, are the angry ghosts of the displaced now cursing the games? We know that many who were evicted from their apartments in the area to make room for the stadium are cursing the Games, but they’re still alive.
Plagiarism (2015)
The Olympic emblem created by an elite former advertising agency man turns out to be a rip-off of a Belgian theatre emblem. With much haste, a new Olympics emblem had to be resigned.
When the in-house newspaper of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan later did a parody of the emblem, which likened it to the Covid-19 virus structure, the Japan Olympic Committee forced them to pulp the magazines.
It’s a curse to have no sense of humor.
Back to the drawing board (2015)
In July, The Olympic Stadium plans of famous female architect, Zaha Adid, were rejected as the building costs ostensibly were out of control. In reality, it’s probably because the architect was not Japanese, and she was a woman. A famous Japanese male architect was chosen to do the design, which some have said, resembles a rip-off of Zaha Hadid’s design.
Everybody dies (2013-2021)
The architect Hadid did not take kindly to her design being rejected and went to court with the Japan Sports Council. But while the courtroom battle was waging, she suddenly died in the spring of 2016. Hers wasn’t the last death.
As the fever pace to complete the stadium mounted, in March of 2017, a freshly hired construction company employee, 23, killed himself after mental and physical exhaustion in a horrifying case of “Karoshi” – death by overwork. He logged 190 hours of overtime in a 30-day period before his death.
In May of 2020, the 54-year old owner of a fried pork cutlets restaurant, who was scheduled to be one of the Olympic Torch Relay runners, torched himself to death. Due to Covid-19, the Olympics had been postponed, he had to close down his shop and was in deep despair.
In June of 2021, an accountant for the Japan Olympic Committee killed himself by jumping in front of a train on the Asakusa line. Did he know something about the bribes? People began asking, will the accounting ledgers for the Tokyo Olympics be burned, like they were for the Nagano Winter Olympics?
The Japanese media has politely not followed the story. The Japan Olympic Committee refuses to discuss it.
Smells worse than fishy (2017-2021)
In 2017, the swimming area set aside for the triathlon near Odaiba was found to be polluted with fecal matter and not safe to swim in. It turns out that in times of heavy rain, the sewage system overflows into the pool area. The problem is allegedly fixed but the New York Post and the Korean Press have been reporting, “The area smells like a sewer” – even now.
The coronavirus outbreak was a curse for the world, but the government of Japan, desperate to hold the Olympics, downplayed the virus, under-tested and was slow to take action. Even in early March of 2020, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, said, “It’s inconceivable that we don’t hold the Olympics this year.”
The day after the Olympics were postponed, the number of Covid-19 cases in Tokyo mysteriously surged and Koike discussed having a lockdown and the “Covid-19 infection explosion.”
Japan, eager to put on a good face and host the Games no matter what, has haphazardly handled the virus, which has resulted in more than 15,000 deaths now, the worst in East Asia.
In contrast, Korea has had a little over 2,000 deaths. Vietnam, which has a population of 95 million (Japan 126 million) has only had 370 deaths.
Despite warnings, and even a scolding from the Emperor, the “safe and secure” Games are going forward, even while outbreaks continue in the Olympic Village and Tokyo hospital beds are now in short supply.
The army of the unlucky
It’s hard to keep track of all those involved in the Olympics who have been fired or forced to resign from their jobs since Japan won the bid, but here’s a partial list with their misdeeds. However, some of these unfortunate souls may still be haunting the Games.
Yoshiro Mori, former prime minister, head of the Tokyo Olympic Committee (sexist remarks)
Keigo Oyamada, original composer for the Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremonies (abusing disabled children in the past)
Shinzo Abe, now honorary advisor to the Olympics (resigned as PM ostensibly because of stomach problems, but was also under investigation for election law violations)
Hiroshi Sasaki, former Olympics creative director (planning an opening ceremony skit that would ridicule obese people)
Tsunekazu Takeda, former president of The Japan Olympic Committee (allegations of giving bribes and corruption)
Most expensive summer Games
The price of hosting the Olympics and Paralympics has astronomically increased from 734 billion yen ($6.67 billion) when the bid was made. Last December, the Japanese government estimated it will cost about $154 billion.
That’s a huge cost overrun. Part of the high costs might have come from a vice-president of the Japan Olympic Committee having reported ties to the largest yakuza group in Japan, but who really knows?
The cost to Japan’s public image from these mishandled Games is probably incalculable.
Too damn hot
Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote that “Hell is other people” and in a Covid-19 infested Tokyo, that rings truer than ever but it’s also true that Tokyo summers feel like being in an inferno.
If “Fukushima is under control” was the biggest lie told by Japan in this decade, the second can be found in Tokyo’s original bid for the 2020 Games. They claimed July 24 to August 9 is a great time for sports “With many days of mild and sunny weather, this period provides an ideal climate for athletes to perform at their best.”
Anyone who lives here knows this isn’t true. With a heat index of 101 degrees and thousands hospitalized with heat-stroke each summer, Tokyo summers are not ideal for anything. That’s why the 1964 Tokyo Olympics were held in October.
By 2019, Tokyo had to sort of admit it had lied and began trying out a coating on the marathon roads to reduce the heat. In August, it was reported that it had a reverse effect, making the temperatures rise 2.6 degrees celsius at 150 centimeters above the ground, and increasing damage from UV rays. The IOC later ignored Tokyo Governor Koike and moved the marathon to northern Japan’s Sapporo City.
In these “cursed” Olympics, athletes and participants face the double-threat of Covid-19 infections and/or heat-stroke.
Let the Games begin.
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