As a boy in Mobile, I'd go down to be my creep.

Spend my time alone, a dead efficient thing.

And when I took the field, it wasn't to make friends.

With a fight in mind, you know, against them.

And I already knew I could be with this girl for me.

Hello and welcome to episode 1646 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangrafts

presented by our Patreon supporters, I am Ben Mimberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of

Fangrafts, hello Meg.

So sad news on Friday, we've been saying that far too often lately, but in this case, it is particularly true.

Hank Aaron, Henry Aaron, as he preferred to be called, died at age 86, and really came as a shock, even after the string of losses of Hall of Famers,

nine previous Hall of Famers who had passed away since last April, and we've touched on all or most of them, and they were all great losses to the game.

Henry Aaron is kind of in a class by himself among those greats, even just to a great among the greats, just one of those names that it's really hard to imagine baseball being without.

Like, you know, on some level that one day there will be no Henry Aaron, there will be no Willie Mays, but until it actually happens, it's just hard to imagine because it's just such a pillar of the sport just sort of tied up.

So inextricably with it, and when you learn about the game, it's just one of the first people you learn about him and his accomplishments.

And so to have that taken away, it is just a sad day for him to be gone, although as always, it's nice that his life and legacy have prompted such an outpouring of appreciation.

Yeah, and I think we'll next week we'll try to have some guests on to help us do justice to his playing career and his life and his legacy and all the nuance and complexity to that, but there are very few baseball reference pages that are as as starkly populated with black ink.

As Hank Aaron's there's so there's so few that just stand out in terms of their obvious magnificence. And so I think what we thought we would do today is just spend a little bit of time on some of his statistical achievements because yeah, I think that, you know, for for any kind of baseball fan for a fan who comes to it with a historical appreciation for the game who enjoys the play on the field, who enjoys the stats.

And he just he had something to offer to everyone because his play and his legacy was so spectacular. So I don't know, Ben, do you have a favorite Henry Aaron stat?

There are so many.

It's hard to pick one. It's hard to pick just one.

Yeah, my colleague Zach Kram at the Ringer just did a list of Aaron Funfax. Just forty more Funfax long for his number. And I'm sure that he could have kept going because he has one of those careers kind of a Bonsian career where you could slice and dice the numbers.

And it's just mind-boggling really. And the numbers are just part of the life, but the numbers alone are so incredible.

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