Who is Wilmer Aaron?

Henry (Hank) Aaron was one of the greatest players in Major League Baseball history. Born to a poor family in Mobile, Alabama with seven siblings, Hank overcame the odds and became a Hall-of-Fame player. He hit 755 home runs (a record for many years before being broken by Barry Bonds), drove in 2,297 runs (still a record as of 2020), won a World Series, an MVP, several Gold Gloves, batting titles, and was named an all-star more than 20 times. He is clearly one of the most decorated players in history. But Hammerin' Hank, despite being a hero to so many, faced a lot of racism throughout his career. He began his professional career as a member of the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League in late 1951, affter Jakcie Robinson had broken baseball's color barrier but before the end of mostly segregated baseball leagues, and immediately dealt with overt racism right in Washington D.C. "We had breakfast while we were waiting for the rain to stop, and I can still envision sitting with the Clowns in a restaurant behind Griffith Stadium and hearing them break all the plates in the kitchen after we finished eating. What a horrible sound. Even as a kid, the irony of it hit me: here we were in the capital in the land of freedom and equality, and they had to destroy the plates that had touched the forks that had been in the mouths of black men. If dogs had eaten off those plates, they'd have washed them."

As a minor leaguer, Aaron thrived. He quickly developed into a top prospect and was one of the best hitters in Minor League Baseball. Despite this, Aaron faced constant racism that nearly caused him to quit the game altogether, but his brother Herbert Jr. told him not to give up his opportunity. His next season he was even better, he was so good that one sportswriter commented "Henry Aaron led the league in everything except hotel accommodations." Because he was one of the few black players at the time, Aaron faced a lot of challenges. He was required to stay in different hotels, eat in different restaurants and often faced personal danger throughout the racially divided South under Jim Crow. As Aaron approached the then-MLB Record of 714 home runs hit by the beloved Babe Ruth (who, notably also faced racism in the 1920s due to his appearance as a person who may have been of mixed heritage), he began to receive hate mail and death threats. He completed the 1973 season with 713 home runs and said that his only fear was that he might not live to see the 1974 season. The post office stated that he had received over 900,000 pieces of mail in 1973, and while most of the mail was supportive of Aaron, much of it was hateful or downright threatening. Aaron's chase of the record showed much of America that racism in baseball did not retire when Jackie Robinson entered the majors in 1947.

His brother Tommie enjoyed some minor success as well, but they were not the only members of the Aaron family trying to make it to the Majors. A cousin of theirs, Wilmer, has a very different story. Wil has enjoyed a successful career as a baseball coach and achieved more as a player than most, but for him the experience was less than ideal. He was a first round pick in the January 1971 draft and immediately enjoyed success at the minor league level, hitting .315 with a .408 OBP at Bluefield in Rookie level ball and ended up hitting close to .300 for his entire 6 year minor league career. Unfortunately, he never made it past AA ball, partially because of his lack of power (he only hit 9 home runs in 2283 at bats in the minor leagues), but a lot had to do with the fact that he was converted into an outfielder despite being an excellent infielder.

Why would Baltimore try to convert Aaron? One reason might have been the presence of Rob Andrews, a future Major League second baseman (and coach of baseball camps I attended as a kid), but according to Wil, it was a lot more nefarious than that. When talking with Wil about his experience, he told me about how they took the black players in camp and put them in Center Field because "that is where they belong". They took a look at him and said "he looks like an outfielder" despite being a truly prototypical second baseman at 5'8" and 155 pounds and possessing a skill and physical tool set that simply would not lead to the Major Leagues as an outfielder. After a couple of years he joined the Indians organization and finally got to play second base on a consistent basis and was clearly the superior defensive second baseman on his team at the AA level. In 1976 he struggled defensively as he was moved back to a role where he played both second base and outfield. That said, his hitting certainly did not suffer, he hit .308 (nobody else on the team hit over .286), leading the team in total bases, stolen bases (34, next most was 13), doubles, triples, hits and runs scored. He also got hit by more pitches than anyone else on the team. Four non-pitching teammates from that team played in the Majors, Wil outhit them all.

Black players in all sports have often been barred from certain positions. For many years, it was nearly impossible for a Black quarterback to reach the upper levels of the sport, and those who did often had to take circuitous routes to get there. Warren Moon had to dominate Canadian football for half a decade before the NFL gave him a chance. Several years before Moon's path to the NFL, a man named Chuck Ealey challenged the conventions and potential position change by saying he would only play in the NFL if he could remain a Quarterback...a position he was good enough at to place 8th in Heisman Trophy voting and be named to the All-American team. Ealey went undrafted and ended up starring in the Canadian Football League. The NFL never came calling. In English Premier League Football (Soccer to Americans), black players not only face a lot of racism, but they too see certain positions as being mostly off-limits for Black Players. Out of Australia there is a blogger called "The Secret Footballer" and they claim that Premier League managers pigeonhole players into specific positions on the field based on their ethnicity. "Managers in the modern game just do not trust black players in certain roles," they write, "and the tempo-controlling midfielder, the most important position in the game relative to how the team plays, is the role in which black players are trusted the least." And sure enough the stats seem to prove that, despite being 35% Black as a league, only 10% of the most important position is made up of Black players. 2020 may have been "the year of the black quarterback" but time will tell if it is an anomaly or a new normal for the NFL in terms of Black players under center.

Changing positions was the norm for a lot of black players throughout the post-integration period. There are no statistics on position changes but there are statistics on the rate of black players by position, and they show a dramatic positional bias by the franchises. Black players play outfield. There is no other way to put it. The franchises saw a player with dark skin and immediately said "he belongs in the outfield". Few catchers in MLB history have been black, and since 2005 when (the great) Charles Johnson retired, the league went several years before another black catcher played a game. In the 2019 season, there was not a single black starting catcher in the Major Leagues. And anyone who has coached Little League can attest that seeing a black kid behind the plate is extremely rare. In fact, in my entire coaching career (in both high school and Little League) I have only seen two black catchers and I was the one who taught both to play the position. One such kid was such a phenomenal athlete behind the plate that my assistant coach and I joked even a decade later "E-Man would've had that" any time someone didn't get to a foul pop-up because...well, E-Man would've gotten it. Wil suffered his position change for the very same reason why E-Man was stuck as a backup outfielder (because he was not a strong hitter) until he was 14 and on my team...he was Black and "looked like an outfielder" to his White coaches. It really is that simple. Players do not choose their positions, their positions are given to them by their coaches through the years. Outfield at the lower levels is boring for many kids too, so the Black kids who get relegated to outfield duties often get bored with the game because they are rarely involved in the action.

TO READ MORE OF WILMER AARON'S STORY, LOOK FOR THE REST IN MY UPCOMING BOOK "You're Not Welcome Here:  Stories of Discrimination and Exclusionary Practices in Baseball"