April 8 · This Day in America
Fourth inning, Atlanta, a sellout night. Hank Aaron turns on a fastball from the Dodgers' Al Downing and drives it over the left-center wall — career home run 715, one past Babe Ruth, a record that had stood since 1935 and that many people did not want a Black man to break. Aaron had spent the chase reading hate mail and death threats by the sack. He rounds the bases as two college kids jog alongside him and his mother runs out to hold him at home plate. "Thank God it's over," he says. He had carried the weight with a quiet dignity that outlasted the cruelty. A nation that had not always deserved him stood and roared, and for one perfect arc of a baseball, America was better than its mail.
Source: baseballhall.org
Also on this day · 1913
With ratification complete, the Constitution changes: United States senators will now be chosen by the voters of each state, not by state legislatures behind closed doors. It is a quiet revolution in who the Senate answers to — the citizens themselves — and the capstone of a Progressive Era push to wrench American democracy a little closer to its own promise.
Source: www.archives.gov
“It's gone! It's 715! There's a new home run champion of all time, and it's Henry Aaron!”Milo Hamilton, broadcast call, April 8, 1974