Honoring Hank Aaron’s 715th Home Run: 10 Most Important Home Runs Ever Hit
Fifty years ago, Hank Aaron made history and Vin Scully perfectly curated it in real time. Aaron did not just break the all-time home run record held by Babe Ruth, the most iconic records in all of sports. With incredible perseverance, he also survived the racist hate that for more than a year made him feel, he said, “like a pig in a slaughterhouse.”
Scully, the broadcasting equal to the Home Run King, rose to the moment with these words:
“A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world.
“And it is a great moment for all of us, particularly Henry Aaron, who was met at home plate by not only every member of the Braves, but by his father and mother.”
Without social context, sport is glorified intramurals. Somebody wins. Somebody loses. Only when sport connects people, whether through the tethers of civic pride, inspiration, aspiration, social justice or simple awe and wonder, do our games truly matter.
That is why I believe Aaron’s 715th home run is the most important home run ever hit. It did not win a championship. It was bigger.
In choosing my 10 most important home runs ever hit, I looked beyond the score. Yes, history matters. The most important baseball moments do change history. But I also want cultural significance, the home runs that get so embedded in the fabric of America that they resonate with even a non-baseball fan. And I want authenticity. It’s not too much to ask that the most important home runs are achieved legitimately, which is why you won’t see any PED-fueled home runs on my list.
1. Hank Aaron Career Home Run No. 715, 1974
Aaron received hundreds of letters in 1973 filled with racial insults and death threats that had to be vetted by the FBI. He left ballparks by back exits. He needed police escorts. His children lived under kidnap threats.
The grueling chase ended with No. 715 against Dodgers pitcher Al Downing at 9:07 on Monday night, April 8, 1974, in Atlanta—50 years ago. Thirty-five million people watched on television. President Richard Nixon, who 22 days later would give a televised address about the Watergate scandal, immediately placed a phone call to congratulate Aaron.
Shamefully, MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn wasn’t there. He skipped the historic event to speak at a private event in Cleveland.
When Aaron was asked to address the crowd, the first thing that came out of his mouth was, “Thank God it’s over!”
He spent that night at home with friends and family. They stayed up chatting until 4 a.m. Hank finally went to bed at 6. By the time Hank reported to the stadium for the next game he was exhausted.
“Just tired. All I felt was tired. And relieved,” he said when asked how he felt. “The average person doesn’t realize what a nightmare this has been, the same questions every day, the controversy ...”
2. Kirk Gibson, 1988 World Series Game 1
It happened during the peak of baseball’s popularity, with all the images and backstory to make it an indelible part of American culture. It is the epitome of why we love sports—and baseball in particular. A stunning moment out of nowhere in a game in which you cannot run out the clock. How about this cast: Dennis Eckersley on the mound, Tony La Russa and Tommy Lasorda in the dugout and Scully, Joe Garagiola, Bob Costas and Marv Albert on the NBC broadcast and Jack Buck and Bill White on CBS radio.
3. Carlton Fisk, 1975 World Series Game 6
Three days of rain forced Kuhn to make a gamble: schedule a weeknight World Series game at 8:30 p.m., smack in the family viewing hour of network television. Sports television changed that night.
As I wrote in 2015 about the most influential baseball broadcast ever:
“Think about what we now take for granted in televised sports. Prime-time starts, the networks influencing when games are played, cameras placed at unusual vantage points, reaction shots of athletes away from the ball—all of it can be traced to the NBC telecast of Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. What the 1958 NFL title game did for pro football, Game 6 did for televised sports. There is only before and after.”
4. Babe Ruth, 1932 World Series Game 3
It doesn’t matter if you believe the Babe “called his shot” or not. He did point toward the centerfield bleachers, and he did then smack a home run there estimated at 450 feet. It’s the legacy that matters. It’s the Babe at Wrigley Field in the World Series. It’s the origin story to anybody in any sport “calling their shot.”
5. Ted Williams, Last At-Bat Home Run, September 28, 1960
Why include a home run in a meaningless game with only 10,454 people at Fenway Park? One of the people at Fenway that day was John Updike. His subsequent essay, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” is one of the finest American essays of the 20th century. It began, “Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark.” It continued to sing from there. When the crowd wanted Williams to take a bow after he hit a home run in his final at-bat, Updike wrote of Williams’s refusal, “Gods do not answer letters.”
6. Bill Mazeroski, 1960 World Series Game 7
The quintessential boyhood dream: a home run in the bottom of the ninth to win a World Series Game 7. The moment was made greater because it was Mazeroski, batting eighth in the Pittsburgh lineup, who ended a 10–9 game in which not one strikeout was recorded.
7. Joe Carter, 1993 World Series Game 6
It wasn’t a Game 7, but this was the one time a World Series ended on a home run when the team was trailing. Toronto trailed Philadelphia, 6-5, when Carter connected off Mitch Williams with two future Hall of Famers on base, Rickey Henderson and Paul Molitor.
8. David Ortiz, 2004 ALCS Game 4
The stolen base by Dave Roberts made it possible for the Red Sox to tie the game, averting—for the moment—a four-game sweep to the Yankees. It was Ortiz’s home run in the 12th that delivered the win, setting in motion the greatest postseason comeback in sports history and the breaking of a curse generations of New Englanders had endured.
9. Derek Jeter, 1996 ALCS Game 1
When the Orioles left Yankee Stadium after Game 2, many of them were carping that they should have been going home up two games to none. Instead, five outs from a win in Game 1, they watched Jeter flip a fly ball to rightfield that Tony Tarasco was about to catch when a fan, Jeffrey Maier, deflected it with his glove into the stands for a tying home run. The moment was the start to the only true dynasty of the free-agent era. From 1996–2000, the Yankees won four of five World Series while going 21–8 at home in the postseason.
10. Bobby Thomson, 1951 Tiebreaker Game
“The Shot Heard ‘Round the World” is a legend boosted by a particular time and place: when baseball and publishing were such heavily New York-centric pursuits. The revelation of the Giants’ second-half sign-stealing scheme significantly weakens the drama and import of their comeback against the Dodgers.
Honorable mention: Aaron Judge home run No. 62 in 2022; Roger Maris home run No. 61 in 1961; Bucky Dent home run in 1978 tiebreaker game; Kirby Puckett home run in 1991 World Series Game 6.
