This Is Strictly Need-to-Know

First in home runs, first in runs batted in, third in hits.

All-time.

Torii Hunter shook his head at what he already knew, just to hear the numbers again aloud, spoken in a baseball clubhouse.

He’d met Hank Aaron four years before, at the All-Star game in Milwaukee. He’d just walked up to him in the dugout, grabbed his hand and introduced himself, Aaron responding, “I’ve been watching you,� in a way that said he liked what he saw.

“It was memorable for me,� Hunter said.

It had often occurred to Hunter that Aaron did not get the play he deserved, not from baseball, not from the people who record it, not from the analysts who ponder it, and not from the kids in his old neighborhood, where Babe Ruth still gets a lot of the run.

The Babe is mythical. Yankees royalty. Hank showed up for work every day.

“Now, kids know nothing about Hank Aaron,� Hunter said. “I’m talking about black kids. They should know who Hank Aaron is.�

Despite his body of work, the awards named after him, the street outside Turner Field that bears his name, the charities he runs, the statues in front of two big league ballparks, and the home runs he hit in the developing television age, Aaron, by most definitions and certainly outside of Atlanta and Milwaukee, is overlooked.

Too small-market. Too dignified. Too clean. Too ... quiet?

“But you know,� Hunter said, “Babe Ruth is dead. Can’t get any more quiet than that.�

He wasn’t knocking Ruth. That’s not the point.

As Barry Bonds homers himself toward Aaron, dragging with him all kinds of personal and professional debris, Aaron and his legacy will benefit the most.

The Babe, we already knew. As for Hank, maybe we could use another introduction.

So, I called and asked to speak to Mr. Hank Aaron.

“He isn’t scheduling any interviews at this time,� the woman at the Atlanta Braves’ offices said.

But, I protested, I haven’t told you what it’s about.

“He’s still not scheduling interviews,� she said coolly.

Oh, I said.

“You could send an e-mail.�

She recited her address, not his.

I wasn’t going to get all “Roger and Me� over this. But it was worth one phone call. One e-mail. Neither of which, I assumed, would ever reach Mr. Hank Aaron.

I wrote anyway:

“Mr. Aaron,

“I’ve just come off three weeks following Barry Bonds, including two days in Milwaukee, where I passed your statue four times, coming and going. You should see the way parents herd their young sons and daughters into the foreground, insisting they’ll appreciate these photos one day. Maybe you have, maybe at the bronze outside Turner Field.

“Anyway, as the days went by, and the nation’s baseball fans began to look beyond Babe Ruth at 714 to you at 755, it seemed there was a constructive side to Bonds stomping through the 700s.

“That is, you.

“We will again inspect your career. Twenty-three seasons of elegance, of endurance, of tolerance. It will remind us how you hit, how you bore being hit.

“Perhaps you do not sense it, but what is being reborn is an appreciation for your life’s work, broader than it was three decades ago, when your mailbox held irrational hate.

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about: How it all looks at 72, from behind a desk in Atlanta, and how it is that yours is not the face of baseball. When I asked your friend, Bud Selig, these things, he said, ‘He is to me. You know what Hank Aaron is to me? He’s not only the face of the game, he’s the soul of the game.’

“I thought it would be a good time to get to know you. All of us do.

“The timing’s awkward, I know.

“But don’t think of it as being drawn into the middle of it; think of it as being held above it.�

That was five days ago.

As commissioner of baseball and former owner of the Brewers, Selig has known Aaron for going on half a century.

He called Aaron “one of the most decent, thoughtful, sensitive human beings I’ve ever known.�

He won’t call me back, I said. Selig laughed.

“He’s the same Hank Aaron I remember from 48 years ago,� he said. “He never did anything to draw attention to himself, other than those incredible feats on the field.�

There has to be room for Aaron and Ruth, along with Bonds and Mays and Williams and DiMaggio and Robinson. There has to be a limit to Aaron’s reluctance.

He stayed in the game all these years, first as player development director for the Braves, then as senior vice president. He must still love it, as Selig says he does, and they talk weekly, if not more often. He must have ideas and opinions. Stories to tell.

Maybe when Bonds retires. When that’s blown over.

“It would be great for baseball to latch on to somebody you can like, respect and appreciate,� Dave Winfield said. “I’m not saying, ‘Don’t [like, respect and appreciate] the other guy.’ �

Winfield’s career overlapped Aaron’s briefly. He says he knows Aaron pretty well. They’ve sat on the same Hall of Fame stage four times.

“Hank came in and broke a lot of those records. But I’m sure they show on TV a lot more of Babe Ruth taking a swing than Hank Aaron,� Winfield said. “He’s a quiet, private man who had to endure a lot. Society wasn’t as accepting of people breaking sacred records. Everyone who played against him, with him, we know what he had to go through.�

He paused and added, “America was different.�

Hunter, for one, hopes it’s true, that Bonds’ next 40 home runs will lead us all back to Aaron.

“I want to know him,� he said. “He is our pastime. As a black American, I look up to him. His face isn’t seen, but he’s a true hero. He is the true king for me. He’s the best hitter, no matter what. Even if Barry Bonds passes him, I still say Hank Aaron is the best.�

Maybe that’s so, said Kenny Lofton, who played a season in Atlanta, where he became acquainted with Aaron. But he did not accept the premise that another season of Bonds would benefit Aaron’s legacy.

“No,� he said firmly. “I don’t know if it’s society itself or the media. But whoever made Babe Ruth the legend he was didn’t make Hank Aaron the same way.�