Major League Awesomeness
Baseball hero Hank Aaron meets the Milwaukee Brewers' Hank the Dog
Sports history was made in Wisconsin on Thursday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, when the one and only Hammerin' Hank Aaron met the newest Milwaukee baseball star — who was named after him — the one and only Hank the Dog.
Hank the Dog was a stray when the Brewers found him at their training camp in Arizona this past February. The team then adopted him as their new mascot — complete with a jersey bearing his own special number, "K9" — and gave him a new home with the team's general counsel Marti Wronski. The Brewers also donate a portion of the proceeds from the sale of Hank-related merchandise to the Wisconsin Humane Society, and they have held other events with him to promote rescue-pet adoption.
And of course, right from the moment he first arrived at the Brewers camp, the staff and players there named him in honor of Milwaukee's greatest sports legend.
Hank Aaron started out his career in 1954 with the Milwaukee Braves, then followed the team when it moved to Atlanta in 1966. He then returned to Milwaukee in 1975, to finish his career with the recently formed Brewers club. Over the course of his career, he hit an astonishing 755 home runs. He now lives again in Atlanta, and is visiting Milwaukee for a special event tonight, "An Evening with Hank Aaron." --Eric Kleefeld