On September 5, 1954, in Cincinnati, Henry Aaron slid into third base and broke his right ankle, and his rookie season ended with thirteen home runs and a cast. The Braves had brought him up only because Bobby Thomson had broken his own ankle in spring training. Nobody yet knew what they had. The following year he hit .314 with 27 home runs and 106 runs batted in, and played in the first of his All-Star Games.
That was the summer of this card. Topps turned its whole 1955 set on its side, 206 cards at 3 3/4 by 2 5/8 inches, the first time the company had laid every card out the long way. Each one carried two pictures: a large head-and-shoulders portrait, and beside it a smaller drawn figure in action. On Aaron’s the head shot appears to be the same photograph Topps had used on his rookie card, the young face under the cap looking off to the side, a little wary.
The name bar says Hank. The signature printed across the picture says Henry.
Behind him the ground is a bright yellow. The Braves’ old Indian-head logo sits in the upper left, and beneath it the small figure finishes a swing, the bat wrapped around behind him. Across the bottom runs a red bar with his name and position. The name bar says Hank. The signature printed across the picture says Henry, which is what he wrote and what the people who knew him called him.
It is easy to treat the second card as the one that comes after the important one. In 1955 it was the other way round. The 1954 card shows a twenty-year-old who had not done anything yet. This one shows a ballplayer who had come back from a broken leg and turned into an All-Star in a single year, and in Milwaukee, where the Braves had arrived only two seasons earlier, people had begun to notice the quiet outfielder in the number 44.
The yellow ground is the first thing to look at in any copy. Yellow shows a scuff or a stain more readily than almost any other color, and the 1955s were printed on stock that browns at the edges. Being horizontal, the card wears along its long sides. Centering wanders, as it does throughout the set, and a copy with the portrait square in its frame and the yellow still bright is the exception.
