Half a century ago, despite mounting pressure from civil rights leaders and prominent black baseball players, no major league team had hired a black manager. The issue became a national issue at that year’s All-Star Game, when newly crowned home run king Henry Aaron challenged his own team, the Atlanta Braves, who had just passed him over for a managerial vacancy.
Aaron was still an active player, but player-managers were not yet extinct, with several active players being promoted to managerial positions before the end of the 1970s. And Aaron was not happy with how Atlanta was handling the opening.
“The situation could have been handled more tastefully,” Aaron told reporters during the 1974 game in Pittsburgh. “I think I deserved to be asked.”
After firing Eddie Mathews in late June, the Braves selected Clyde King as their interim manager. Aaron, 40, had broken Babe Ruth’s career home run record that season, which would be his final season in Atlanta.
“Maybe they were afraid I would say yes, I want the job,” he said during the All-Star break. “And maybe I would have, just to get a break. There are plenty of people better qualified than me, but you don’t see any of them getting a job.”
Aaron argued that the California Angels should have hired Frank Robinson when they had a managerial vacancy earlier that year; the job went to Dick Williams. After the season, the Cleveland Indians named Robinson the sport’s first black manager — earning him a congratulatory telegram from President Gerald Ford. Robinson became the team’s player-manager at the start of the 1975 season.
In 1974, Aaron also approached his younger brother, Tommie Aaron, who was managing Atlanta’s Class AA team in Savannah, as a candidate for the Braves’ vacancy. When asked about the younger Aaron, Atlanta general manager Eddie Robinson said, “Tommie is involved in a tight pennant race and we feel it is unfair to take him out of Savannah at this time” — a comment that became “a laughingstock,” according to the New York Times.
“I’m sure he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in the minor leagues and just fade away,” Henry Aaron said. Tommie Aaron would remain in the Braves system for four more years, including two years at Class AAA Richmond. He later coached for the Braves, but never got a chance to manage at the major league level. He died of leukemia in 1984 at age 45.
“I’m disappointed that the Braves’ front office made the statement that I wasn’t interested in managing and that Tommie was too valuable in Savannah,” Aaron said. “I felt a little insulted and I think it was an insult to all blacks in baseball. … I don’t know what baseball is afraid of. I’ve heard such bad stories about what front offices think that I don’t want to repeat them.”
Aaron also pushed back against the argument that future black managers should gain experience in the minor leagues.
“I don’t remember Ted Williams going to the minor leagues,” he said, referring to the Hall of Fame player who got the Washington Senators job in 1969 without any managerial experience, “or Eddie Mathews, for that matter.”
Eddie Robinson, the Braves’ GM, said he was surprised that Aaron was interested in the manager’s job. But then he gave a telling non-answer when asked if the city of Atlanta was ready to accept a black manager.
“I don’t think I want to comment on that,” Robinson said.
In a column in the Boston Globe, Ray Fitzgerald confirmed Aaron’s criticism.
“News item: Whitey Lockman has resigned as manager of the Cubs,” Fitzgerald wrote. “His successor is Jim Marshall — third base coach, white and safe. Ernie Banks, 20-year-old superstar and black, was not mentioned.” He placed the Braves’ new manager in the same category as Lockman and Marshall, noting that he was “nothing special” as manager of the San Francisco Giants.
In his two years with the Giants, King posted a .534 winning percentage; the Braves fired him in 1975 after he posted a .487 winning percentage in two seasons.
When Aaron made his pointed remarks, anger was growing over the lack of opportunities for black players after their careers were over. The issue gained momentum in the early 1970s, but Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947, had long championed the cause — albeit with his eyes wide open.
“I feel that there is as much resistance at the top of baseball to the idea of letting Negroes reach the top as there was in the early ’40s to letting Negroes play,” he wrote in a 1965 column for the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, nearly a decade after he retired as a player. Robinson said that baseball owners were willing to “exploit the talent of Negroes and other colored players,” but that they had nowhere to go in the sport after their playing careers. “Because the owners don’t have the courage or the decency to think in terms of the contributions these players have made to their fortunes, they just let them go.”
And during the 1972 World Series, just nine days before his death, he took the opportunity of a ceremony honoring his historic debut to make a final, poignant plea:
“I’m extremely proud and happy to be here this afternoon, but I have to admit I’ll be even happier and prouder one day when I look at that third base coaching line and see a black face managing baseball.”
The following year, Aaron helped take over the baton from Robinson, his lifelong inspiration. Aaron had a reputation as a soft-spoken player, but he became more assertive on civil rights issues as his career progressed. In a 1973 profile, Time magazine described his evolution from “reluctant aspiring baseball player to outspoken social critic” and noted that he gave a pessimistic response when asked for advice to black children about playing sports.
“Until we crack the field of managers, front office personnel and coaches, there’s really no hope for black kids coming into the game. We’ve been giants on the field for 20 years. Then they’re done with us,” he said, echoing Robinson’s criticism. “What baseball needs to do is give blacks the opportunity to show leadership in places other than the field.”
Aaron, who died in 2021, paid tribute to Robinson’s efforts in a 1999 essay in Time titled “Jackie Robinson: The Trailblazer.”
“He campaigned for baseball to hire a black third-base coach, and then a black manager,” Aaron wrote. “In 1969, he declined an invitation to appear at a vintage car game at Yankee Stadium to protest the lack of progress in that area.”
By the time of the 1974 All-Star Game, the lack of black managers had sparked protests, with some holding up signs outside the Hilton hotel where Oakland Athletics superstar Reggie Jackson was being honored as the top vote-getter in the all-star ballot. The Rev. Donald McIlvane of the Catholic Interracial Council, one of four protesting groups, told the New York Times that they wanted guests visiting Pittsburgh “to know that someone cared about them.” He said none of the baseball officials stopped to talk to them.
In 1987, early in his final Major League season, Jackson co-wrote a cover story with Peter Gammons for Sports Illustrated about racism in baseball and society, looking back on the frustrating early 1970s, when there were no black managers.
“Fifteen years ago I heard black players talk with bitterness about baseball’s closed-door policy,” he wrote. “They accepted the fact that they would not have the same opportunities when they retired as white players. …
“What can be done?” he asked. “To begin with, instead of complaining, blacks should continually name the people who are qualified for high baseball positions.”
Last month, in an emotional interview with Fox Sports, Jackson spoke in raw detail about the racism he endured as a young minor league player in Birmingham, Alabama, the site of that night’s Negro Leagues tribute game. He credited white teammates like Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi for keeping him out of fights with local racists.
“I would have been killed here, for punching someone’s ass,” Jackson said. “You would have seen me in an oak tree somewhere.”
Aaron, too, faced a barrage of racism — including death threats — especially as he approached Ruth’s record. After breaking it in April 1974, he said, “I thank God it’s all over.”
“To some, he was more than a threat to Babe Ruth’s record; he was a black man on the verge of breaking the most revered record held by a white man,” Dave Anderson wrote in a Times column during that 1974 All-Star break. “Now,” Anderson added, “he has quietly but determinedly assumed a new role that has to do with his blackness, a willingness to be the major league’s first black manager — if the Atlanta Braves management will give him the chance.”
