October 3, 1976: Henry Aaron’s final game comes with a base hit, but leaves him wanting more

At the end of his 23-year career, Henry Aaron wanted to play a little longer.

Aaron’s sixth-inning infield single off Detroit Tigers left-hander Dave Roberts drove in a run – his major-league record 2,297th RBI – in the Milwaukee Brewers’ 1976 season finale. Milwaukee manager Alex Grammas promptly sent a pinch-runner, rookie Jim Gantner, to replace the 42-year-old Aaron at first. With his playing career complete, Aaron trotted off the field to applause from a Milwaukee County Stadium home crowd of 6,858 on October 3, 1976.1

Aaron spent his final two major-league seasons with a new team, but not in a new city. He welcomed the trade from the Atlanta Braves to Milwaukee, where he began his major-league career as a rookie in 1954. Aaron was in Japan competing in a home-run derby against Japanese record-holder Sadaharu Oh when the deal was finalized in November 1974, seven months after he broke Babe Ruth’s career home-run record.2 Aaron was asleep in his hotel room at 3 A.M. when Brewers owner Bud Selig called with the news.3

“The trade wasn’t a complete surprise to me, because I knew that [Braves owner Bill Bartholomay] and Selig had been talking,” Aaron recalled in his 1991 autobiography, I Had A Hammer. “But it was news, and great news. I still loved Milwaukee, and unlike Atlanta, Milwaukee loved me. I knew I would be going to a place where I was wanted, and that sounded awfully good.”4

During his final two seasons, Aaron did not match the success he had achieved in Atlanta. He hit .234 with 12 home runs and 60 RBIs in 543 at-bats in 1975 for a Milwaukee franchise that was founded as the Seattle Pilots in 1969, the same year Aaron was selected as an All-Star for the 19th of 25 times in his career.5

Aaron had started 1976 strong, collecting two hits and three RBIs in the season opener against the New York Yankees. He knocked two more hits and had an RBI in his next game. But by May 1 he was hitting .250 and his playing time and batting average had diminished. Aaron played in 85 games in 1976 and finished with 10 home runs and a .229 batting average. “I’ve been playing on borrowed time the last two years,” he said after the season ended. “It has been embarrassing for the kind of career I’ve had to be finished with a .229.”6

The Brewers honored Aaron with two weeks remaining in a season that saw their team, like Aaron, start strong, but fade. The hourlong pregame ceremony came before the Brewers’ September 17 matchup with the Yankees and drew more than 40,000 to County Stadium.7

The ceremony, with former teammates Warren Spahn and Eddie Mathews and superstar peers Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays attending, started with a two-minute standing ovation. Aaron then attempted to thank his fans twice – but was drowned out both times by the crowd – before sharing his gratitude for “doing so much more me. I would like to say I’ve been extremely lucky in baseball.”8

Current Brewers teammate George Scott paid tribute to Aaron that day: “I think he’s so good that they should have made another higher league just for him to play in. He’s really amazing.”9

In his autobiography, Aaron recounted what that day meant to him. He acknowledged his disappointment that he went hitless in five at-bats. “But if nothing else, it was more proof that the time had come to walk away, because in the past, I had always been able to respond to moments like that. And despite my failures at the plate, it was a day that I would cherish: It gave me one final memory of Milwaukee – all those great fans coming to the park just to say good-bye.”10

On October 3 Aaron batted fourth as the Brewers’ designated hitter, his position in nearly every game he played with Milwaukee in 1975 and 1976.11 The lineup included three September call-up rookies – starting pitcher Gary Beare, left fielder Dan Thomas, and center fielder Steve Bowling – as well as third-year shortstop Robin Yount, who was born during Aaron’s second major-league season of 1955 and went on to join Aaron in the 3,000-hit club and the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Detroit scored in the second inning against Beare when second baseman Pedro García’s single brought Willie Horton home. García, who had been traded from the Brewers to the Tigers earlier in the 1976 season, singled again in the fourth to score center fielder Mickey Stanley.

Facing the veteran Roberts, Aaron led off the Milwaukee second by grounding out to shortstop Jerry Manuel. He grounded out again in the fourth – this time to third. Milwaukee cut into Detroit’s lead in the in the bottom of the fourth when Scott scored on pitcher Roberts’ error.

Detroit added three runs in the sixth off Beare – the result of a Horton double, singles by Dan Meyer, Stanley, and Bill Freehan, and García’s sacrifice fly for his third RBI of the game.

Aaron’s third – and final – at-bat came in the sixth after Brewers third baseman Jack Heidemann started the inning by grounding out to first, followed by Yount’s popup out to first in foul territory. Catcher Charlie Moore singled and moved to third on Scott’s double, bringing Aaron to the plate with two outs.

Aaron’s grounder glanced off shortstop Manuel’s glove for his 3,771st hit, second only to Ty Cobb at the time, in his 3,298th career game played – then tops on the major leagues’ all-time games-played list. The single gave Aaron 6,856 total bases for his career – a mark that as of 2025 remained more than 600 ahead of Albert Pujols, who holds second place on the all-time list.

Mike Gonring, writing for the Milwaukee Journal, described Aaron’s last at-bat: “He took a pitch, then fouled a pitch back to the screen. Then he hit a hard ground ball to the right of Jerry Manuel. Manuel went three steps to his right and tried to backhand the ball. It bounced off his glove, and Aaron was safe at first.”12

Neither team scored again. Aaron’s final game ended in a 5-2 loss to the Tigers – Milwaukee’s 95th of the season – and a last-place finish in the American League East Division. Roberts earned his 16th win of the season to go with 17 losses, while Beare took the loss – his second for the Brewers in five starts.

Gonring, in his game recap, wrote that Aaron deserved better. “[H]e ended it in bad company, surrounded by a team that played as if it didn’t know how to win, in front of a crowd – 6,858 – that did not reflect the importance of the moment.”13

Aaron had run out of reasons to keep playing, Tom Boswell observed in a syndicated column for the Washington Post.14 No more pennants, no more All-Star Games, and no more records, Boswell wrote. Aaron seemed to concur with Boswell’s views. “There is nothing else left for me to do. If I had a goal, if there was some reason to punish my body, if I still had the drive, I think I could still do it.”15

It turns out that after his final at-bat in his final game, Aaron admitted he did have one more reason to play and one more record to achieve: He noted, in a postgame interview, that he would have preferred to remain in the game after his sixth-inning at-bat. He had tied Ruth for second all-time in runs scored at 2,174 four days earlier in a win over the Baltimore Orioles. “I would have loved to have another run. After I was through, there was nothing really going through my head except that I needed one more run to pass Babe Ruth.”16

Time perhaps caused Aaron to rethink his stance about being replaced during the middle of his final game. In his autobiography, Aaron noted that remaining tied with Ruth was not all that bad. “[W]hen it came down to it, I didn’t care very much about breaking another tie with Ruth. I sort of liked the idea of sharing something with the Babe. …”17

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for box scores, player, team, and season pages, pitching and batting logs, and other material.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIL/MIL197610030.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1976/B10030MIL1976.htm

NOTES

1  “The Last Hurrah: Henry Aaron Bids Farewell as One of Game’s All-Time Greats,” Austin (Texas) American-Statesman, October 4, 1976: 29.

2  Hank Aaron and Lonnie Wheeler, I Had A Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), 290.

3  I Had a Hammer, 290.

4  I Had a Hammer, 290.

5  The Pilots had relocated to Milwaukee in 1970 and rebranded as the Brewers.

6  “Aaron Finishes Career in Style With Base Hit,” Shreveport (Louisiana) Journal, October 4, 1976: 21.

7  Hank Hangs ’Em Up,” York (Pennsylvania) Daily Record, September 18, 1976: 15.

8  “Hank Hangs ’Em Up.”

9  “Hank Bids Fans Farewell,” Freeport (Illinois) Journal-Standard, September 18, 1976: 9.

10  Aaron and Wheeler, I Had a Hammer, 301.

11  Aaron appeared in 222 games with the Brewers, 201 of them as the team’s designated hitter.

12  Mike Gonring, “A Singular Exit for King Henry I,” Milwaukee Journal, October 4, 1976: 8.

13  Gonring.

14  Tom Boswell, “End Finally Comes for Aaron,” Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin), October 4, 1976: 9.

15  Boswell.

16  “Aaron Finishes Career in Style With Base Hit.”

17  Aaron and Wheeler, I Had a Hammer, 301.