Shoe News
Hank Aaron home run ball No. 755
By Tim “Shoe” Sullivan
It all started on July 20, 1976. Milwaukee County Stadium. Henry Aaron of the Brewers was up to bat. Dick Drago of the California Angels threw a pitch in the seventh inning, and Aaron hit it over the left-field fence for a home run. Milwaukee won the game, 6-2.
The blast was the 41-year old Aaron’s career home run No. 755. He would never hit another homer in the major leagues. For many years, Aaron’s 755 home runs were the most ever hit by a player in the big leagues.
Growing up, I was a huge fan of the Milwaukee Braves. They had great players like Eddie Mathews, Joe Adcock, Warren Spahn, and Lew Burdette. This was in the 1950s. And perhaps their biggest star was Hank Aaron. No. 44 was awesome. I would get irritated when the national sports magazines would come out. Always had stories about New York’s Mickey Mantle and Boston’s Ted Williams and Willie Mays of the Giants; never much about Henry Aaron or the Braves, although Milwaukee’s Eddie Mathews was on the first cover of “Sports Illustrated.” In my opinion, “Hammerin’ Hank” never quite got his due.
This story then moves to July of 1985, nine years after Aaron smacked No. 755. I was at a softball game at Iverson Park in Stevens Point. Ron Carlson, a Point cop who I had just met, was going back and forth with me about sports trivia. Then he stumped me. He asked, “Who caught Hank Aaron’s final home run?”
Well, how do you answer that? It was a home run. That ruled out any player. Maybe it was a trick question. I said I had no idea. Carlson said, “The answer is Richard Arndt. Richard was a Brewer groundskeeper, and I saw him retrieve the ball. I was on the ground crew too.”
Now keep in mind that so far, this saga went from Milwaukee to Stevens Point. I asked Ron if he would try to locate Richard. I wondered if Arndt still had the ball. Carlson tried but came up empty.
Now comes another twist. In 1986, John Anderson of the UW-Stevens Point Alumnus paper called my buddy Randy Wievel and me in for a chat. I think it was about catching foul balls or something. Right at the end of our interview, John asked us if we were working on any other stories. As a joke, Randy said he wanted to do a story about Bob Uecker’s final triple. I said I wanted to find the guy who caught Hank Aaron’s final home run. To our surprise, John put those tidbits into the article about us.
The Alumnus paper got some attention. Gene Mueller of radio station WKTI in Milwaukee had Carlson and me on the air one morning. Gene went to school at UWSP. I told him about Carlson’s role in this. But Gene couldn’t track down Arndt either.
Milwaukee to Stevens Point and back to Milwaukee and back to Point.
And then came the million to one shot. Two days after the radio show, I was in Plover spinning records for Rich Derezinski’s Super Bowl which is now Opi’s. Turns out I didn’t have to find Arndt. He found me. Rich said I had a call from Albuquerque, NM. New Mexico? I knew that was somewhere around Arizona, but that was about it. The guy says: “Hi. I’m Richard Arndt. Are you looking for me?”
I was stunned. He said that he still had the baseball. He also said that his mom graduated from the Stevens Point Normal College and got the Alumnus paper where she was living in Houston, TX. She called Richard in Albuquerque, and Richard called me.
Over the next year, Richard and I called each other at least once a week. He always stressed two points: The first was that he really wanted his hero Hank Aaron to have that baseball. The second was that he had an idea the baseball was becoming very valuable, and he didn’t want Aaron to have to pay for it.
That was not a good combination. Dick had put out feelers over the years with no luck. He asked me if I wanted to be something of a “go-between” in this. I said I’d try. So I called Hank Aaron in Atlanta. I’ll never forget this. Got ahold of his secretary. Told her who I was and where I was calling from. She was not impressed and said that Hank was busy. I calmly told her: “Okay. It’s too bad he’s busy, because I might be able to get his last home run ball.” Then I gave her my number.
Aaron called back in five minutes, and I almost dropped the phone. My hero was calling me.
Over time, we had several conversations over the phone. Hank definitely wanted that baseball. He would always ask: “What does he want?” I could never really give Aaron an answer because I didn’t know.
Later on, Richard officially made me his “agent.” I was one agent with one client who had one baseball.
I tried everything. Ted Turner, owner of the Atlanta Braves, wasn’t interested. Neither was George Steinbrenner of the Yankees. I put ads in Sports Collectors Digest. One guy wanted to trade a Ty Cobb jersey for the ball. Another offered $20,000. I turned them all down. I was basically contacting very rich guys who would pay Richard a lot of money and then give the ball to Mr. Aaron. Good luck with that, right?
From Milwaukee to Stevens Point and back to Milwaukee to Houston to Albuquerque.
Many years went by, and Richard kept the baseball. A deal with the Brewers fell through. And then came 1999 and New York. That baseball kept getting more valuable year after year. A New York auction house called me; said they were gonna auction Mickey Mantle baseballs and Babe Ruth baseballs and Mark McGwire baseballs and stuff like that. I called Richard, and he went to the auction with his son and No. 755. There was no need for me to go. I told Richard, “After the auction, you either come home with that baseball or $1 million.”
The auction was on national television. I watched as the bidding got to around $700,000. That sure beat a Ty Cobb jersey. At midnight, Richard called. He still had the ball. Fine with me. Then at two in the morning, he called again. He sold the ball for $650,000 to a collector in Connecticut. I guess Mr. Aaron knew the guy.
Bottom line: It wasn’t $1 million, but I guess $650,000 ain’t bad for a baseball. Spawn creator Todd McFarland paid $3.1 million for a McGwire home run ball. Richard’s baseball fetched the second highest figure for a baseball in history I’m told. I got a bunch of stories and some cash out of the deal, and I got to actually talk to my hero Henry Aaron. And what a ride it was.
*** Correction ***
Oops. In the January 22, 2021 issue, Shoe incorrectly stated that Lorena “Ren” Berry was a Tigerton standout in softball, baseball, and basketball. Actually, she was a star player in softball, basketball, and volleyball.
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