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Late on a Tuesday afternoon the workout center buried deep beneath the CNN towers in Atlanta was busy. I had just finished sitting in on the final edit session of a piece that would run the next morning. Knowing the treadmills would be overflowing shortly, I had grabbed my satchel of shorts and sneakers and dashed for the back steps. There were three daily windows of opportunity at the gym; early in the morning before work, midday, and when the final bell rang and class let out. If you didn’t time it just right, you would spend your hour sweating over the last puny dumbbell in the far corner. So with blinders on and with a furious commitment I blundered through the door and found the last cubicle where I could sit and change. I sensed turmoil but kept my focus. I heard arghing (think about it, the sound of bending at the waist and pulling off a tassled loafer, arghing) next to me, but since it blended so closely to my own argh, I ignored it.Finally, as if we were synchronized by fate, we stood simultaneously, us arghers. "Hey," said the shorter, older man by way of Southern hello. For the first time, I turned and found myself staring into the bright brown eyes of Henry Aaron. All 755 home runs, 3,771 hits and 2,297 RBI, of him. "Wha...?" I intelligently questioned after an interminable gap. "They just moved my office here," he laughed quietly, "and this really works well for me. You come here often?" Yes, and I am a Virgo. We had first met as adversaries, decades before. I was a young newspaperman asking redundantly silly questions, and he was a legend chasing one. It should have been one of the most inspiring, glorious times of a man’s life, but instead it was one ugly moment after another. His eyes, much darker then, questioned me back. One particular afternoon comes readily to mind. He sat, naked but for a carefully-placed towel, surrounded by the most vitriolic mail perhaps anyone has ever received. It sat in piles, steaming, smelling, like parts of a pasture. I had asked, if I recall, how difficult it was to concentrate on catching Babe Ruth when the world seemed eager for a lynching. He just stared at me. You have your nerve, son, said his eyes. Instead, he just shook his head and looked away. Another reporter stepped in. A few weeks later, in the same clubhouse, he stopped on his way to the showers and gripped my bicep with one of those massive hands.
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