Aaron was clean, but he was black and was worried for his life. Bonds has no color problems, but he is suspect. Anyway, the real champ is a Japanese.
Weird stories and strange statistics, baseball is loaded with them.
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Over the winter, Aaron was the recipient of death threats and a large assortment of hate mail from people who did not want to see a black man break Ruth's nearly sacrosanct home run record. Sports Illustrated pointedly summarized the racist vitriole that Aaron was forced to endure:
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"Is this to be the year in which Aaron, at the age of thirty-nine, takes a moon walk above one of the most hallowed individual records in American sport...? Or will it be remembered as the season in which Aaron, the most dignified of athletes, was besieged with hate mail and trapped by the cobwebs and goblins that lurk in baseball's attic?"
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Aaron
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btw:
Oh's 868 home runs in Japan set an all-time pro baseball record.
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In 1988, Oh and Hank Aaron created the World Children's Baseball Fair (WCBF), to increase the popularity of baseball by working with youngsters.
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http://www.baseballlibrary.com/ballplayers/player.php?name=Sadaharu_Oh_1940
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