{"id":20504,"date":"2021-01-22T12:22:14","date_gmt":"2021-01-22T17:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thegeorgiasun.com\/?p=20504"},"modified":"2023-09-24T15:52:22","modified_gmt":"2023-09-24T19:52:22","slug":"braves-legend-hank-aaron-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/?p=20504","title":{"rendered":"Braves legend Hank Aaron dies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Hank Aaron smashed baseballs \u2014 and he smashed racial barriers. The Atlanta Braves legend and American icon&nbsp;died Friday at the age of 86.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Aaron&nbsp;broke Babe Ruth&#8217;s all-time home run record in 1974 \u2014&nbsp;a once-unimaginable baseball feat \u2014 and held the record for more than three decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThose moments that I had back then taught me a lesson,&#8221; Aaron once told GPB. \u201cNo matter what you take for granted, you try to do the very best you could to be sure that you made things worthwhile.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He told the <em>Atlanta Journal-Constitution<\/em> in 2006: \u201cI would just want to be remembered as somebody who just tried to be fair with people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Boxing legend Muhammad Ali <a href=\"https:\/\/baseballhall.org\/hall-of-famers\/aaron-hank\">once said<\/a> this of Aaron: \u201cThe only man I idolize more than myself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As news of Aaron\u2019s death spread, <a class=\"wpil_keyword_link\" href=\"\/city\/Atlanta\"   title=\"Atlanta\" data-wpil-keyword-link=\"linked\">Atlanta<\/a> Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said, \u201cThis is a considerable loss for the entire city of Atlanta. While the world knew him as \u2018Hammering Hank Aaron\u2019 because of his incredible, record-setting baseball career, he was a cornerstone of our village, graciously and freely joining Mrs. Aaron in giving their presence and resources toward making our city a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gov. Brian Kemp tweeted, \u201cHeartbreaking news. Hank Aaron was an American icon and a Georgia legend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hank Aaron smashed baseballs \u2014 and he smashed racial barriers. The Atlanta Braves legend and American icon&nbsp;died Friday at the age of 86. Aaron&nbsp;broke Babe Ruth&#8217;s all-time home run record in 1974 \u2014&nbsp;a once-unimaginable baseball feat \u2014 and held the record for more than three decades. \u201cThose moments that I had back then taught me [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20505,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[9357,9356,9138,8474],"class_list":["post-20504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-georgia-people","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-hank-aaron","tag-sports","tag-sun","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}