It’s one of the most enduring moments in sports history: Chubby 40-year-old slugger Henry Aaron steps to the plate in front of 54,000 fans in Atlanta on April 8, 1974, wallops his 715th career home run to left-center field, bell-bottomed fans jump out of the stands to round the bases with him, and he is mobbed by family and reporters as he crosses home plate. And with that, professional sports’ most hallowed record fell.
But what if Aaron didn’t actually break the record that night? What if he actually surpassed Babe Ruth’s home-run record 13 days later, when he hit number 717 in front of a sleepy afternoon crowd of 14,922 fans in the antiseptic new Astrodome in Houston?
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