[bat clinks against ball]
- Announcer: And there it goes.
Hammerin' Hank hits a home run.
And this one is special.
[cheers and applause]
- In 1994, Henry Aaron,
member of the Baseball Hall of Fame,
and the man who broke Babe Ruth's home run record
visited Eau Claire.
He came to unveil
a sculpture of himself as an 18-year-old ballplayer,
just starting his climb to the Major Leagues,
at Carson Park in Eau Claire.
Like many cities,
Eau Claire has a long-time love of baseball.
- Some of the Civil War veterans returned,
having seen the game being played on the East Coast,
came back and brought the game back to Eau Claire,
which was typical of around the Midwest at that time.
And probably you could say Eau Claire has had a town team
from mid-1860s
until present day.
So that's a continuous run
of 100 and [chuckles] almost 50 years
of town baseball.
- With the help of the federal government,
Eau Claire built a new stadium
during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
- It really was a ray
of hope for the city and this whole area
to have this ballpark go up
and say "Hey, we've got something beyond the Depression.
"We're going to get through this
"and we're going to have a beautiful place
to watch baseball for years to come here."
- Carson Park,
in the middle of the old log-holding pond,
became the home of the Eau Claire Bears,
a minor league team that eventually became affiliated
with the major league Milwaukee Braves.
- Dozens of players from our town teams
or our minor league teams
made it to the major leagues.
- But in 1950, the leadership of the Bears faced a crisis,
when word spread that the Braves
were about to send black ballplayers
to play in Eau Claire.
Just three years earlier, Jackie Robinson became
the first African American
to play in the major leagues.
- Once Jackie successfully integrates Major League Baseball
this now opens the door
for other young African-American baseball players
to move into the Major Leagues.
- In Eau Claire, the local Toastmasters club,
debating whether or not black players should be brought in,
touched off a firestorm
on the editorial pages of the newspaper.
- But what was interesting about that
is even though some people opposed it,
what happened was
is there was a bigger push against those people, saying,
"No, Eau Claire is just like any other American city.
"We should be accepting of black ballplayers here
and there's no reason they shouldn't be able to come here."
So it was a controversy for a little while,
but the first year there were two black players who came.
- They were having a little trouble
finding a place for the players to live.
One thing I read said that
it just kind of disappeared before their eyes.
And the team was trying to find a place.
Well, they remembered that my dad had a rooming house.
- Marty Crowe, the coach of the Catholic High School,
owned a large house
and rented out rooms to help pay the bills.
- They said, "We've got four players
"that need a place to stay.
Do you have any rooms there?" - "Yeah, send them over."
- "Well, two of them are black."
- "Send them over."
- So, over they came.
And one was Billy Bruton,
who went on to play for the Milwaukee Braves,
and then, there was another fella named Roy White.
- Billy Bruton and Roy White
had broken the color barrier in Eau Claire,
following the lead of Jackie Robinson.
- We wholeheartedly believe that
Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier
wasn't just a part of the civil rights movement.
It was the beginning of the civil rights movement.
That is before Brown vs. the Board of Education.
That is before
Rosa Parks's refusal to move to the back of the bus.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
was a sophomore at Morehouse College
when Jackie signed his contract
to join the Brooklyn Dodgers organization.
And so for all intents and purposes,
this is what started the ball of social progress
rolling in our country-- baseball.
And our country
literally jumped on the coattail of baseball.
So even though baseball had been vilified
for not allowing blacks to play,
when it opened its door, our country followed suit.
- Robinson began his professional career
playing in the Negro leagues,
for the Kansas City Monarchs.
- The Negro leagues were professional baseball
for African-American, Hispanic baseball players.
During that era of American segregation,
African-American players were shunned from the Major Leagues,
and so they formed their own league,
right here in Kansas City in 1920.
These leagues were created so that these
great baseball players
would have an opportunity to showcase
their world-class baseball abilities.
- When Henry Aaron left Mobile, Alabama,
he began his career in the Negro leagues,
playing for the Indianapolis Clowns.
- And so, here's a young Henry Aaron.
By the time Robinson breaks the color barrier
in 1947,
he can dream of going to the major leagues.
You know that dream is now planted,
although his route to the Major Leagues
came through the Negro Leagues.
- Impressed with his hitting for Indianapolis,
the Braves signed Henry Aaron,
and sent him to the Eau Claire Bears
to see what he could do.
- He had never really been around white people in his life.
He had lived in a black neighborhood.
He had gone to black schools, lived in segregated society.
And now he takes the first airplane ride of his life,
ends up in Eau Claire, a city of 36,000 people
that maybe has three black people at the most.
It's virtually an all-white city,
and they say, "Okay, Henry, play baseball."
He said, "I was scared."
If people of Eau Claire hadn't treated him well that summer,
and he went back home, there would not have been
the Henry Aaron that we know of who broke Babe Ruth's record.
I just truly believe that.
[bat clinks against ball]
- Henry Aaron: If I had not had the initiative to come here,
and the people here in Eau Claire
didn't open their arms up to me and accept me,
I don't know what I would have done in baseball,
even though I had the talent to play it.
I just don't know what would have happened to me
in those next 23 years.
- He went from this guy
who had never hit a white pitcher
to hitting .336,
being named Rookie of the Year...
and being on the All-Star team,
all in three months...
So, he left Eau Claire with a lot of confidence,
both personally and professionally.
And I think that was the springboard
to his entire career, really.
- I really feel just humble, appreciative
that I had the pleasure of playing in Eau Claire,
and playing here
for people that,
that appreciated me for my talent
and that's all I wanted them to do,
was just appreciate my talent.