Howard Bryant.

Howard, thank you so much for being with us on short notice.

And I'm so grateful to have you because you have such a unique perspective.

Having wrote the book The Last Hero.

A life of Henry, Can you talk to me about what it was like working on the book with him and how you met him?

Yeah, well, thank you for this.

It's a very devastating day, obviously.

And I remember back in 2005, 2006, when I first wanted to work on this project and it took forever to try to get Henry to, uh, even reach him because his camp was so convinced that the only reason people wanted to talk to him was to compare him to Barry Bonds because his record was in jeopardy of being broken.

And I finally got a chance to call him.

And it was on Jackie Robinson's birthday.

It was January 31st, 2000 and six, and we we talked and he said to me, I don't understand why you're calling Nobody.

Nobody cares about me.

No one is.

Why would anybody be interested in me?

Because you're Henry Aaron, and it was so fascinating because where he was at that point was he It was very aware of his accomplishments and he was very clear about his accomplishments.

But he had been convinced in a lot of ways that this culture didn't have any interest in decency and didn't have any interest in sort of the, you know, his journey.

And it was I.

The thing I love most about Henry was that he was so aware he was absolutely just He really enjoyed the fact that people did finally respect him and that people did reach him.

After all, he went through in 1974 that the country had reached him, and that caught up to his values and he got to enjoy it.

And people always thought he was bitter.

He wasn't.

He got to enjoy this.

And he really, really loved the fact that he got to spend the last quarter century just being a total legend.

Teoh a new generation Howard, How are you ultimately able to convince him people would appreciate the story that you had to tell about him?

How were you able to convince him of that?

Well, we're on the phone for about an hour, and I remember the the thing that kind of did it waas I said to him, Well, people aren't interested in you because of Barry Bonds people are interested in in you, period your your Henry Aaron, do you e?

I was sort of a bays that he was so reticent about it.

But I think finally, what did it was?

I got to meet him for the first time in New York, um, at a signing, and we sat down and for the entire conversation, all we talked about, all he talked about was was mobile and at and Atlanta and Milwaukee.

And he told me this phenomenal story about how much he didn't want to go to Atlanta because of how you know, he didn't wanna go back to the Deep South.

And then he sat down with with Ralph Ralph Abernathy and Dr King and Andrew Young, and they told him, or is important to this movement and to black people as we are.

And we need you.

We need you to come here and that conversation all talking about that.

He sort of sat back and he said, Ask whatever question you need.

It was almost as if his memory reminded him of Yeah, I have a part in this in this American story was here where it all.

Howard, of kind of how he represented.

It's almost like a politician pre Watergate or something.

Ah, home run champion pre steroids era.

How he read what he represented Not just, obviously, is an African American who toppled the I think at the moment he did it the single most significant record in the history of American team sports.

I think by far, actually, um uh, but the fact that he did it, that he eventually came to represent a kind of more innocents time like before the level of cheating that we saw years later.

Was he aware of that at all?

Yeah.

And I think that's why the title of the book is the last hero.

That was the last record that to that point in baseball that I felt was really untainted by drugs, that this was the big one.

And once this one stopped people, we're gonna have to look at him very differently.

And the fact that I think he wanted to stay away from all of that because he felt like it was a lose lose situation.

He always felt like if I come out and complain about, you know, drugs in sports and people are gonna look at me as if I'm this old man with sour grapes And if I say nothing, people think that I'm that I'm tacitly condoning what happened to the sport.

So it's a lose lose situation for me.

But what ended up happening was, was he actually grew even stronger in the minds of people because of what we remember about our own nostalgia and our own sort of innocents, whether it's accurate or not.

What did he say to you about how exactly he felt about the whole steroids ever?

He's completely offended by it.

I think that he he was never He never wanted to be in that situation of having to, um of having to compare and having to talk about it because he always thought that it was a lose lose for him.

But he was offended by it.

He never he was offended, really by by two things.

One you know, one was one was the drugs and the other was the fact of of where the country was going.

I talked to him 2.5 weeks ago.

We were talking about working on another project, whether we've been working on a project together, and one of the things that he was really happy about was he was happy that he survived, that he survived the last four years, he because he talked about he used to tell me stories about how when the when he was little and the you know, the Ku Klux Klan would come down the street and mobile.

His his parents used to throw him and the kids under the bed, and he used to talk about not wanting to feel like the country was going backwards.

And it was amazing that whenever we talked about things, we talked about where the country was going as much as as much as sports and everything else.

And I was always fascinated by his ability to talk about these things and not be bitter.

When he had every right to be bitter, he was just I just really love the fact, if any, y'all get to live.

If we all get to be 86 years old, ghetto live at a place in peace.

He was at peace with where he was and where the world was.

And that, to me, is, uh is a gift.