Aaron's 755th and final home run went quietly, but legacy remains for 50th anniversary

MILWAUKEE – As home runs go, it was nothing particularly special.

That’s actually one of the things Bud Selig loves most about No. 755.

Hank Aaron hit the final home run of his storied career 50 years ago Monday, a solo shot off Angels reliever Dick Drago that curled around the left-field foul pole in the seventh inning of a 6-2 Brewers win at Milwaukee County Stadium on July 20, 1976. It gave the Brewers their third run of the inning after Don Money hit a sacrifice fly and George Scott hit his own home run preceding Aaron, who was in his second season with the Brewers at the conclusion of a 23-year, Hall of Fame career that began and ended in Milwaukee.

For more than 31 years, Aaron’s 755th home run represented the all-time record, and it remains on a short list of baseball’s most iconic numbers.

Only 10,134 fans witnessed it in person.

“It was not spectacular,” Selig said this week from his museum of an office in downtown Milwaukee, where the walls and shelves feature Aaron more than any other player. “When he hit one that season, the newspapers just said, “Hank hit home run No. X, Hank hit home run No. Y.’

“They were like Henry: Quiet, not a big deal. And he didn’t want to make a big deal of it.”

Aaron played 23 more games for the Brewers before a leg injury sidelined him for good, but he never hit another homer. Because of that, the baseball became a priceless artifact of history – and that has its own story.

It had landed in section 28 of the lower grandstand and was retrieved by a part-time groundskeeper named Richard Arndt, a social worker who was born in Madison, lived most of his adult life to that point in Albuquerque, but spent that one summer in Milwaukee. Arndt says he wanted to meet Aaron but was denied by a clubhouse staffer. So he took the baseball home instead, and says the club fired him and docked his final paycheck by $5 for confiscating club property.

In his 1991 autobiography, I Had a Hammer, Aaron chronicled numerous attempts over the years to acquire the ball, writing, “To me, that ball is just as important as the one from No. 715 [that surpassed Babe Ruth], because it's the one that established the record. The record is 755, not 715."

Arndt had the ball autographed by an unknowing Aaron at a public signing in 1994 and sold it at auction to collector Andrew Knuth in 1999, with a quarter of the proceeds going to Aaron’s charitable foundation. Knuth loaned the ball to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, where it is on display in an exhibit titled, Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream.

“That number,” Selig said of 755, “would be my favorite number, because it was established here. His career was so remarkable, and that number was like no other number at the time. For reasons I don’t have to explain to you here and now, that’s my number. I’m biased on this subject, and I’m proud of it.”

It was Selig who had orchestrated Aaron’s return to Milwaukee on Nov. 2, 1974 – the only transaction you’ll find on Aaron’s record other than the day he signed with the Braves in 1952. The Brewers gave up outfielder Dave May, a good player who’d been an All-Star in ‘73.

Aaron would call approving that deal one of his best decisions. But initially he expressed some reservations about returning to the city where he’d led the Milwaukee Braves to a pair of World Series.

“He was modest,” Selig said. “He knew he was slipping. He did say to me when we were making the deal to bring him here, ‘I’m not the same player you remember.’

“I said, ‘I don’t care.’ And it turned out I was right.”

At the 1975 home opener, more than 48,000 fans attended “Welcome Back Henry Day,” an event still so close to Selig’s heart 51 years later that he reached into his desk drawer and produced a pamphlet from that day. Aaron walked in the first inning, drove in a run with a groundout in the third and singled in the sixth for his first Brewers hit. His return was such a big deal that Aaron and Brewers broadcaster Bob Uecker did a daily radio show, sponsored by Magnavox, in addition to Uecker’s usual show with the manager. Aaron also became a mentor to the Brewers’ second-year shortstop, a 19-year-old kid named Robin Yount.

Following the ‘75 season, Aaron turned down an offer to manage after the Brewers fired his old friend and former Braves teammate Del Crandall. Aaron returned for ‘76 and hit 10 more home runs and drove in 35 in 85 games. Along the way, some of MLB’s iconic numbers were etched into the record books. Aaron broke Ruth’s record for RBIs in 1975 and finished with 2,297 career RBIs and 6,856 total bases. Both still stand as records today.

With his career coming to an end, the Brewers and more than 40,000 fans saluted Aaron on Sept. 17, 1976 and announced the formation of a youth fund that later became the Hank Aaron Chasing the Dream Fund, which has provided hundreds of scholarships over the years to college-bound students while continuing to grow under the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. On Monday’s 50th anniversary of No. 755, that group and Brewers Community Foundation will present a check for $250,000 to a group called MKE Fellows, which will use the money to start a “755 Dreamers” scholarship fund in Aaron’s memory.

The presentation will take place at Clinton Rose Senior Center in Milwaukee, where Selig and Aaron’s wife, Billye, are expected on hand to dedicate a new mural of Aaron from local artists Rosy Petri and Moolah Bred.

And at that night’s Mets-Brewers game, the Brewers will announce the winners of their “What 755 Means to Me” contest, which challenged kids to write an essay or film a video about Aaron’s impact on baseball, civil rights, and equality. It’s an impact that continues to this day.

“It’s a testament to his immense care for the community and his humility,” said Brewers Community Foundation executive director Cecelia Gore, who got to know Aaron well before he passed away in 2021. “His whole concept was to give back, and that’s why his legacy carries on.”