Hank Aaron Hits First Home Run

Date: April 23, 1954 • Location: Rome, Italy

Batting for the Milwaukee Braves against Vic Raschi of the St. Louis Cardinals, Hank Aaron hit the first of his 755 home runs in Major League Baseball.

In baseball, batting is the act of facing the opposing pitcher and trying to produce offense for one's team. A batter or hitter is a person whose turn it is to face the pitcher. The three main goals of batters are to become a baserunner, to drive runners home or to advance runners along the bases for others to drive home, but the techniques and strategies they use to do so vary. Hitting uses a motion which is virtually unique to baseball and its fellow bat-and-ball sports, one that is rarely used in other sports. Hitting is unique because it involves rotating in the horizontal plane of movement, unlike most sports movements which occur in the vertical plane.