715 was huge. For anyone to have broken what was probably the most sacred sports record in the American consciousness would have been enormous. Add to that the fact that it was broken by a black ballplayer playing in the Deep South, in a time that was still racially charged, only 6 years removed from MLK's assasination. Aaron later disclosed that he had received a deluge of hate mail, and death threats which had genuinely worried him, probably for good reason.
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My avatar is a sketch by my son who is an art school graduate. Some of his sketches and paintings are at
https://www.jamesspaethartwork.com/
He is available to do custom drawings in graphite, charcoal and other media. He also sells some of his works as note cards/greeting cards on Etsy under JamesSpaethArt.
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