Trading Card Database currently lists nearly 8,000 different Hank Aaron baseball cards, and you might be curious to know how many of those were produced during his career vs after or how many showed him with each of his teams. Rest assured, such articles might come one of these days, but this one deals with a different sort of number: Aaron’s uniform number.
The Hammer is most closely associated with the number 44 since he wore that number for twenty-two consecutive seasons as a member of the Milwaukee Braves, Atlanta Braves, and Milwaukee Brewers. However, the die-hard Aaron fans out there know that Aaron also wore number 5, and that’s where we’ll start things, though perhaps with a different team than you were expecting.
Aaron got his start in professional baseball in 1952 with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League. As his jersey number with the squad was 5, let’s start with the first baseball card to show it.
Honors here belong to an Aaron card from the 2021 Topps x Nashville Stars set, an on-demand release that very few collectors in fact demanded. (The print run for the set was 3,238.) If you’re not too distracted by the card’s Topps Project 70 meets 1985 Donruss design or a seemingly left-handed Aaron, take a look at the action shot in the lower right, and you’ll spot the “5” we’re looking for.
Skipping over Aaron’s time in Eau Claire, Jacksonville, and Puerto Rico since none of his cards with those teams show jersey numbers, let’s move to his first season in Milwaukee, where he wore that same number 5. Apart from a false positive we’ll cover later, did Aaron’s “rookie number” make it onto any cards?
While the answer is no for 1954 itself, Aaron and his jersey number do make it onto his 1955 Golden Stamp. Aaron’s 1955 Bowman may also sport the number but not in any readily discernible way.
Though we’ll still have two more numbers to cover, we can at last move on to Aaron’s famous 44. Naturally, we wouldn’t expect to see the number on any 1954 issues, but what about 1955? Here, the best example comes from Aaron’s Spic ‘n Span card, though his Johnston’s Cookies card provides at least a partial view for those counting such things.
The next number we’ll look at has an obvious answer once I tell you what it is. Just give me a second to figure out how to type it first. Hmm, looks like I can’t so I’ll have to settle for this: ЯUOᖷ-YTЯOᖷ. And here, of course, is the first card to show it, at least partially.
The final Aaron number to make it onto cardboard is a funny one. For at least a day or two during 1957 Spring Training, the Hammer wore what appears to be a number 52 jersey, and just as you’d expect when a guy has nearly 8,000 baseball cards, the jersey made it onto some cards.
Its first appearance was on the back of Aaron’s 1959 Topps All-Star card, albeit in Jack Davis cartoon form and with the jersey number updated to the more familiar 44.
A similar treatment comes in Aaron’s 1984-89 O’Connell & Son Ink cards while the first sets to leave the image alone are the 1984 Galasso Baseball Collector Series and the 1986 Big League Chew Home Run Legends.
Then, in 1991, things get a little more interesting, courtesy of the Upper Deck “Heroes of Baseball” insert set. Despite what is clearly a double-digit number on Aaron’s jersey, the 1957 photo is now ascribed to (gulp!) Aaron’s rookie year! The final paragraph of the card back even tells the story of Aaron’s switch from 5 to 44.
However, Upper Deck is hardly alone in this peccadillo. Even the Braves themselves touted Aaron’s Spring Training photo as a rookie image on the packaging for their 2017 “A-List” bobblehead. Odds are good Topps will do similar one of these days.
To my knowledge, we have now fully covered the cardboard debuts of Aaron’s various uniform numbers. However, as always, let me know in the Comments if I missed some.
