September 29, 1973: Henry Aaron’s 713th home run brings him within one of the Babe

Henry Aaron hits his 713th career home run to left-center field on September 29, 1973, at Atlanta Stadium. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

The barometer was stuck. It was installed only a few weeks earlier, at the City of Atlanta’s request, to replace Hartsfield International Airport’s “Welcome to Atlanta” sign. By the night of September 29, 1973, before the Atlanta Braves’ next to last game of the year, the number on it had not changed in seven days.

But this display, dubbed an “Aaron Home Run Countdown barometer,” wasn’t broken.1 Hank Aaron, just three career homers shy of breaking Babe Ruth’s record of 714, had not hit one since September 22. His sitting-out on September 23, a day off on September 24, a leaping catch by Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Willie Davis on September 25, and a September 27 rainout had prolonged the wait.2 Las Vegas oddsmaker “Jimmy the Greek” Snyder now gave the Braves slugger a 20-to-1 chance of tying Ruth – and 100-to-1 odds of hitting No. 715 – before the September 30 season finale.3 In short, the airport installation was doing what all barometers do: showing the pressure.

If Aaron didn’t see his chase as a race against time, others did it for him. For months his name and face had filled magazine racks, front pages of newspapers, and national newscasts, at times rivaling coverage of the fast-growing Watergate scandal. Plans emerged for billboards and bumper stickers to decorate city highways: “ATLANTA SALUTES HANK AARON.”4 National network cameras tailed him. Mail accumulated from fans eager to see him do what no other major-leaguer had accomplished. As far back as early summer, sportswriters had asked if Aaron’s below-.230 batting average before July was proof that home runs were on his mind.5 Each time he came to bat, umpires handed the opposing battery a specially marked ball, apparently easier to authenticate should Aaron hit it out.6

Aaron denied feeling pressure, but frustrations mounted nonetheless. No matter how often the 39-year-old said he felt no rush to tie or overtake Ruth in ’73, that he’d have no problem doing it in ’74 instead, he sensed reporters weren’t believing him.7 The sudden rush of fan mail meant Aaron no longer had time to sign replies to each individual sender, as he had enjoyed doing since he joined the majors in 1955.8 Then there were the attacks from multiple fronts: self-described purists who considered Ruth more deserving of praise because he had played fewer games and used heavier bats; racist letter-writers who threatened, at all costs, to stop a Black man from breaking a White player’s record; and conspiracy theorists convinced that the Braves were paying Aaron to cool his bat until spring so the attendance-starved team could milk the publicity.9 “The Ruth chase should have been the greatest period of my life,” Aaron wrote in his 1991 memoir, “and it was the worst.”10

Aaron shook it off and suited up for the Atlanta Stadium crowd. For many home games in 1973, even as the home-run pursuit drew new fans to baseball, the Braves had failed to sell even 10,000 tickets – but not for Game 161.11 Attendance on this Saturday night stood at 17,836, still low by most big-league standards but decent at the time for Atlanta. And with both the next-to-last-place Braves and visiting fourth-place Houston Astros long dead in the National League pennant race, there was no question whom the people – including Aaron’s father, seated near the home dugout12 – had come to see.

To those anticipating an Aaron home run, the batter ahead of him in the Braves’ order delivered a warm-up act. Darrell Evans, batting third in the bottom of the first inning, capitalized on a Mike Lum double by landing a two-run homer off Houston starter Jerry Reuss. It was Evans’s 41st home run of the season, which aside from Davey Johnson’s 43 marked the most by any Brave that year.

Aaron almost touched home plate, too, except not with a home run. He singled and reached third base on a double by Dusty Baker. But with Johnson striking out and Paul Casanova popping out to first base, the journey was cut short.

Aaron’s next chance came in the third. He walked. A grounder by Baker moments later, to Astros shortstop Roger Metzger, yielded an inning-ending double play. The score remained 2-0, Atlanta.

Until the fifth. Marty Perez loosened up the crowd with a double before scoring on an error by Astros first baseman Lee May. Lum and Evans singled. Aaron, who had noticed Reuss relying on slow curveballs, swung at another.13

It worked.

Fans sprang from their seats – and Aaron’s father lifted his arms – before the ball even cleared the left-center-field fence.14 When it finally did land some 395 feet from home plate, as the Atlanta Constitution’s Wayne Minshew later wrote, “you could have heard them as far north as Chickamauga and as far south as Miami.”15

Aaron circled the bases to make his 713th home run official. The airport’s “Countdown” barometer changed. The NBC television network ran a graphic below an episode of the medical drama Emergency!: one home run left to tie Babe Ruth; two to crown a new baseball king.16

After Aaron tipped his cap and took a minutes-long ovation, fans from inside and outside the ballpark rushed to the ticket booth.17 They sought to buy their piece of the following afternoon’s game, hoping to witness the star’s 714th or 715th homers in person. And if he tied the record before this night was over, at least they could hear it from their places in line.

Reuss’s night, meanwhile, got no better. One at-bat after Aaron, the Astros lefty surrendered a home run to Baker. He followed up by hitting Johnson with a pitch. Only after facing two batters near the bottom of Atlanta’s order – Dick Dietz, who struck out, and Casanova, who popped out to first base – did his five-frame, seven-run outing end.

Aaron got one more opportunity that night. It came in the seventh inning against reliever Larry Dierker, who had joked that he would award his opponent an easy-to-homer pitch.18 Aaron, fully aware that Dierker’s comment was tongue-in-cheek, didn’t let that stop him from trying.

Still, it didn’t happen. Though Aaron swung and hit a 3-and-2 fastball by Dierker, the farthest it went was into short left field, for a bloop single. “Dierker was one of the pitchers who said he’d groove the ball for me,” he told reporters later that night. “You could see for yourself he didn’t. He probably was throwing harder to me than anyone else.”19

Even so, Braves starter Carl Morton outthrew each Houston arm. He allowed only six hits and secured a complete-game shutout, all in just over two hours. The 7-0 victory brought Atlanta’s season record to 76-84 – and Houston to 81-80.

Aaron had plenty of feats to discuss after the game. His 3-for-3 night upped his batting average to .296; his average since the start of July now stood at .369. His home run made him the oldest to hit 40 in a season, and it made the 1973 Braves the first team to have three players with at least 40 home runs. He brought teammates Johnson and Evans into the ballpark’s interview room, if only to give them part of the media spotlight he’d been getting so much of.

No such luck. As the Atlanta Constitution’s Frank Hyland wrote the next day: “Johnson was asked one question, Evans two.”20 The reporters, quite simply, wanted Aaron.

The focus remained on what Aaron hadn’t done. Failure to have at least 714 home runs by the end of that Sunday’s game would all but guarantee another half-year of tabloid fodder, will-he-or-won’t-he speculation, no privacy, and of course more nasty mail.

“If I don’t hit it tomorrow,” Aaron said, “it’s going to be a long, cold winter.”21

Indeed, he went homerless in that season finale. Against Houston’s Dave Roberts, who’d allowed number 712 eight days earlier, Aaron got three hits: all singles. The Braves lost, 5-3. Atlanta’s largest crowd all year – of 40,517 – went home hungry.

What Aaron called the “worst” period of his life got worse. He got death threats. His children received kidnapping threats. His personal assistant forwarded the more graphic letters, many with racist slurs, to the FBI.22 Aaron and his family required police escorts.23 “My kids had to live like they were in prison because of kidnap threats,” he told sportswriter Bill Rhoden, “and I had to live like a pig in a slaughter camp.”24

Just in case, the Atlanta Journal prepared an obituary.25

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ATL/ATL197309290.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1973/B09290ATL1973.htm

NOTES

1  “Atlanta Salutes Hank Aaron,” Covington (Georgia) News, September 13, 1973: 4B.

2  “Standings,” St. Louis Today, September 28-29, 1973: 16.

3  United Press International, “100-1 Odds Against Aaron,” Springfield (Massachusetts) Morning Union, September 29, 1973: 17.

4  “Atlanta Salutes Hank Aaron.”

5  Stan Baldwin and Jerry Jenkins with Hank Aaron, Bad Henry (Radnor, Pennsylvania: Chilton Book Company, 1974), 12-13.

6  Wayne Minshew, “Aaron’s 713th Sets the Stage,” Atlanta Constitution, September 30, 1973: D1.

7  For a book released about a year later, Aaron said, “It made sense that reporters might think I was under pressure. What bothered me was that no one seemed to believe me when I denied it.” Baldwin and Jenkins with Aaron, Bad Henry, 12.

8  Baldwin and Jenkins with Aaron, Bad Henry, 15-16.

9  Baldwin and Jenkins with Aaron, Bad Henry, 24, 27-28.

10  Hank Aaron with Lonnie Wheeler, I Had A Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 3.

11  In 1973, among the National League’s 12 teams, the Atlanta Braves ranked 11th in total attendance (800,655). The team played at least 36 home games that year with fewer than 10,000 paid attendees. See “1973 Atlanta Braves Schedule,” Baseball-Reference.com, https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/ATL/1973-schedule-scores.shtml. Accessed October 2025.

12  Frank Hyland, “Crowd Left – to Buy Tickets,” Atlanta Constitution, September 30, 1973: 10D.

13  Aaron told reporters after the game, “The first time up, I hit a fastball after he’d started me off with slow curves. The next time he threw me two or three slow curveballs, so that third time I was looking for it.” Minshew, “Aaron’s 713th Sets the Stage.”

14  Fred McMane (United Press International), “Aaron Slugs 713th in Brave Victory,” Brownsville (Texas) Herald, September 30, 1973: 1B.

15  McMane, “Aaron Slugs 713th in Brave Victory”; Minshew, “Aaron’s 713th Sets the Stage.”

16  Associated Press, “Nation Sees Hank’s 713th via Replay,” Atlanta Constitution, September 30, 1973: 12D.

17  Hyland, “Crowd Left – to Buy Tickets.”

18  Minshew, “Aaron’s 713th Sets the Stage.”

19  Minshew.

20  Frank Hyland, “Infamy Not for Reuss,” Atlanta Constitution, September 30, 1973: 12D.

21  Minshew, “Aaron’s 713th Sets the Stage.”

22  Baldwin and Jenkins with Aaron, Bad Henry, 16.

23  William B. Rhoden (New York Times News Service), “Hammer Another Year Older,” Huntsville (Alabama) News, February 5, 1994: B1.

24  Rhoden.

25  Lewis Grizzard, If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I’m Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground (New York: Villard Books, 1990), 240.