April 8, 1974: 715

ATLANTA - With one swing, it was all over.

The sacred chase to catch the legend, one that had started 20 years earlier, was over in the time it took him to connect with a waist-high fastball. The magnitude of the moment became apparent as the scoreboard flashed the number "715" as he rounded the bases. The weight that piled on him as he endured a full year of death threats was lifted as quickly as it took him to realize that the two people running next to him on his home run trot were nothing more harmless than two fans congratulating him. And the greatest moment of his life was punctuated when he stepped on home plate and was greeted by teammates and reporters ... and his mother, there to give him a huge hug.

It's almost hard to comprehend now what Hank Aaron went through on his way to breaking Babe Ruth's career home run record. As the 1973 season wound down, and Aaron was getting closer and closer to the magic number of 714 home runs, he started receiving death threats from people who were horrified that a black man would dare challenge the great Babe Ruth. When he ended 1973 one painful home run short of tying Ruth's record, there was genuine fear Aaron wouldn't live to have a chance to break the record; staff members of the Atlanta Journal even received threats for daring to even cover Aaron's quest, to the point where staff writers wrote out Aaron's obituary with the fear he would be murdered.

But Aaron persevered. On his first swing of the season in 1974, he tied Ruth. After the Braves came home to Atlanta, they faced the Dodgers in their home opener. Aaron walked in his first at bat against Al Downing without swinging the bat, then got a pitch he liked on his second. His first swing at home that year cleared the left field fence and entered into history.

All along, Aaron downplayed the home run chase, preferring to simply play the game. Even his record-breaking home run trot was routine, if interrupted by congratulatory hand shakes from the Dodgers' infielders. When those two fans caught up to him between second and third, there was a moment of fear in him, but they were only there to congratulate him. He started to smile. The stoic mask he wore, the one that hid all the struggles he went through, was starting to lift. The smile got bigger.

Then he stepped on home, and he hugged his mom. And the tears started to flow.