Hank Aaron was a national treasure that lead by example. Every baseball fan knows what a master the man was at turning the other cheek, because by now the amount of racism and the number of death threats he received as he closed in on Babe Ruth’s home run record is common knowledge. Even weeks before his death, there was Hammerin’ Hank at an Atlanta-area hospital receiving the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. He was happy to have reporters and photographers follow him, in hopes that it would influence older members of the Black community to do the same.
You can’t really call Aaron’s passing a shock. The man was 86 after all. That doesn’t mean it didn’t cut a lot of us very deep.
Aaron and I share a hometown. It’s part of the reason that I named my son after the man. Baseball fans in Milwaukee mourned. Broadcasters from a variety of networks shared stories of their interactions with Aaron and their memories of watching him play. Nowhere was the loss felt deeper than Atlanta.
Hank Aaron was already a perennial all-star when the Braves left Milwaukee for Atlanta in 1966. He had already won his only World Series title and his only NL MVP award. That didn’t matter. Atlanta threw its arms around Aaron. He was the icon of the franchise even long after Glavin, Maddux, and Smoltz made the team fixtures atop the NL East.
That means that on Friday, no station had more of a duty to tell Aaron’s story and grieve alongside their listeners than 680 the Fan. The Dickey-owned station is the Braves’ flagship and has been an institution for Atlanta sports fans since 1995, the last time the team won the World Series.
“Devastated,” morning co-host John Michaels answers when I asked him how Atlanta felt after the news of Aaron’s death was first reported.
“This is the 3rd person associated with the Braves to pass in the last few months and Aaron is the most painful. Everyone had a story or a moment where they met Mr. Aaron and you can tell how much he impacted everyone’s life in a positive way. What he did for this community and baseball in general cannot be understated. He is one of the great humans and ambassadors for the game of baseball.”
Chuck Oliver, who hosts the station’s afternoon show, Chuck & Chernoff, agrees that it is a city-wide tragedy. As someone born and raised in Atlanta, he says this feels like a truly personal loss to him.
“We’ve never not had Hank,” he told me in an email. “I interviewed him in 2004 and he and Jim Craig are the only two interviews I’ve ever been part of where I don’t think the person being interviewed really understood how important he was. Not talking ‘great at whatever sport’ or All Timer etc, but truly important to people in what he accomplished and what he meant.”
The world learned of Hank Aaron’s death on Friday afternoon. That meant Michaels and his co-hosts on The Front Row were long off the air by the time Fan hosts started talking about Aaron.
Hosts and producers worked their personal contacts to get on people that could speak poignantly about one of the greatest ballplayers to ever live. Being the Braves flagship helped that effort, Michaels says, because the franchise would never turn down the opportunity to glorify Hank Aaron’s contributions to his sport and his city.
“Our shows on Friday did an amazing job of bringing on guests ranging from Chipper Jones to Bob Costas to Al Downing and many others. With the relationship with the Braves we typically have a pretty big Rolodex of Braves guests lined up and no one was saying no on a day like this,” Michaels said.
Michaels and The Front Line would have to wait their turn. That meant that between the announcement of Aaron’s death and the next time the morning show cracked a mic on 680 the Fan, we would know who was playing in the Super Bowl, the Hawks had played twice, Arthur Smith added more coaches to his staff with the Falcons, and tons of mock drafts had come out predicting what the team would do with the 4th overall pick.
None of that mattered. This was Atlanta. Michaels says there is no way he could have come in on Monday morning and not talked about Hank Aaron.
“We absolutely carved out a segment to talk about Hank Aaron. Had it happened Friday while we were on the air, we would have dedicated the remaining portion of the show to talk about his life and memory, but it would’ve been a disservice to our listeners to not address his death as soon as we could. The NFL and the Super Bowl were front and center on a Monday morning but we didn’t forget about Hank .”
In a strange coincidence, Olive had already been thinking about Aaron’s legacy for a week before the Hall of Famer died.
On Wednesday of last week, Don Sutton passed away. While the four-time all-star never pitched for the Braves, he was part of the club’s broadcast team from 1989 until 2006. Sutton is part of the Braves’ Hall of Fame in addition to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Upon Sutton’s passing, Oliver sent his show staff an email that he was kind enough to share an excerpt from with me.
“I was sad yesterday, but I also was reminded again of a valuable opportunity we have,” he wrote “We need to make more about Hank Aaron. We need to celebrate that man, we need to come up with someway to honor him even more than we are already.”
Olive told me that program director Matt Edgar had already decided to dedicate February 5 to honoring Aaron and what he meant to both Atlanta and baseball.
The entire Friday edition of Chuck & Chernoff belonged to memories of Aaron from guests and callers alike. The hosts shared their personal feelings on the event. It might be too early to say it was a chance for the city to come together and heal, but it was certainly a shared moment of grief for the city’s sports fans.
I asked Chuck if he could ever see that sort of community mourning happen again. Hell, had he ever seen it happen before? Is there anyone in the history of Atlanta like Aaron, a man that the city would take a collective moment of silence and remembrance for?
“No, and not certain what would, surely nothing from a sports standpoint,” he said. “There are plenty of very real reasons Ted Turner should be celebrated, he played a huge role in us becoming a legitimate international city, he and Maynard with the airport. But Ted’s kinda different, personal interaction-wise, and also has almost no visability in Atlanta anymore. Last time I saw Ted he struck me as pretty much done with being famous, and it’s been at least a decade since he’s had any interest in talking about his time in sports in Atlanta.”
It is hard to think of a titan left in baseball after the passing of Hank Aaron. I mean, who is the biggest name from the sport’s history still alive and also with an untarnished reputation? Nolan Ryan? Cal Ripkin Jr? Ken Griffey Jr?That is probably why Aaron’s death resonated around the country the way it did. It felt like sports fans were losing something precious.
The staff of 680 the Fan deserves a tip of the cap. MLB Network, ESPN, SiriusXM, they all could do the day long tributes to Aaron. They all could go out and find former opponents and teammates to talk about what he was like on the field. The Fan took on a special challenge though. They found the right way to serve an audience that was mourning one of its own.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
