Aaron, r.f. The Story of My Life, the Good Times and the Bad, from Mobile to Milwaukee to Atlanta

Cleveland and New York: World Publishing, 1968. 8vo. 212 pages. Illustrated with plates from photographs. Publisher's cloth; pictorial dust jacket. Book with small splash stain to top-edge and jacket with small closed tear to rear panel; very good or better and a handsome copy.

The scarce first edition, first printing of the first title in Brignano 1: "A professional baseball player, famous for his ability to hit home runs, focuses on his career, particularly with the Milwaukee Braves and the Atlanta Braves. He also occasionally refers to his youth in Mobile, Alabama, where he was born."

Henry "Hank" Louis Aaron began his baseball career in the "Negro Leagues" playing with the Indianapolis Clowns. He writes of his difficulty transitioning to an almost all-White community and almost all White baseball league, to the point where he almost left the game to return hime (p21-22) As Aaron worked his up through the Major Leagues, he

Aaron had been inspired by Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's color barrier. In this autobiography, he contrasted the opportunity that a life in baseball could bring with the barrier of being an uneducated Black American in Alabama, like his father, at a time when Blacks were experiencing educational inequality (p14-15)

The first printing was in August, 1968, less than a year later, Aaron's autobiography was in its third printing. It was later reprinted by Crowell in 1974.