The World and Everything in It: March 30, 2026

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Legal Docket: Considering mail-in voting and the question, have we lost any practical meaning of the phrase Election Day?

ALITO: We don’t have “Election Day” anymore. We have “Election Month” or we have “Election Months.”

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today, the Monday Moneybeat: David Bahnsen standing by.

And later, the WORLD History Book: the home run that rewrote baseball history.

SCULLY: What a marvelous moment for the country and the world! A black man is getting a standing ovation in the deep south for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol.

ROUGH: It’s Monday, March 30th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Jenny Rough.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

ROUGH:  Up next, Mark Mellinger with today’s news.

MARK MELLINGER, NEWS ANCHOR: Iran: More U.S. troops head to the Middle East » More than 2,500 Marines have arrived in the Middle East as part of the month-long U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran known as Operation Epic Fury. And as U.S. attacks on Iranian infrastructure continue, the Pentagon is reportedly weighing sending 10,000 more troops to the Middle East.

Arkansas Republican Congressman Rick Crawford tells Fox News sending the additional Marines is a good move.

CRAWFORD: What this does is provide the president with more options. And it should send a pretty clear message to the Iranians that this is not the time to be mocking and, and tempting fate.

Meantime, Iran’s parliament speaker says his country is waiting for the arrival of American troops on the ground -quote- “to set them on fire and punish their regional partners forever.”

President Trump has previously said he does not intend to send in ground forces, though he hasn’t ruled it out.

Washington Democratic Congressman Adam Smith is concerned Epic Fury isn’t achieving its objectives.

SMITH: We’ve paid enormous costs to basically somewhat reduce the threat from Iran, not to eliminate it.

A Washington Post report Sunday tells another story, quoting experts who say Epic Fury has significantly damaged Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities.

More than 3,000 people have died in the conflict. This weekend, roughly a dozen American troops were hurt when Iran struck a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan says it will be hosting U.S.-Iran peace talks this week.

U.S. gas prices up more than a dollar over one month » One major impact here in the U.S. of the conflict in the Middle East: skyrocketing prices at the pump.

The average price of a gallon of gas is up more than a dollar from where it was before Epic Fury, and it’s still rising. Analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey:

LUNDBERG: Gasoline prices are up another 46 cents per gallon in the past two weeks. The new average is $4.06 per gallon.

If oil prices don’t stabilize, Lundberg says the cost of gas could shoot up to over $5 dollars a gallon, though she adds moves like easing oil sanctions on Russia and Venezuela could help the U.S. avoid that.

Gas prices are 90 cents a gallon higher right now than they were a year ago.

TSA workers finally getting paid this week » Transportation Security Administration -TSA- workers will finally be getting paid this week, despite the ongoing logjam in Congress that’s been holding up their paychecks for a month and a half.

President Trump issued an executive action Friday giving TSA workers emergency pay. That could mean TSA workers will start receiving back pay as soon as today.

TSA Officer Carlos Rodriguez:

RODRIGUEZ: People still need gas, people still need to uh uh buy lunch, people's families still have needs, and the financial situation for the workers in some of these airports is, is really bad.

Hundreds of TSA workers have quit and thousands have not shown up for work in recent weeks, leading to hours-long security lines at airports across the country. There are hopes that restarting pay could alleviate that, but large airports are still asking flyers to arrive several hours early.

TSA employees have been working without pay since Valentine’s Day, as Democrats in Congress refuse to fund TSA’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

Democrats want reforms to another DHS agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, before they’ll agree to fund DHS. In January, two U.S. citizens died in confrontations with ICE, sparking the political standoff.

DHS funding battle still at an impasse » Meantime, it doesn’t look like any break in the DHS funding impasse is coming soon.

House Republicans passed a bill Friday that would fund DHS for 60 days, but Senate Democrats say it’s dead on arrival.

Democratic Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut tells CBS’s Face the Nation his party’s not backing down from its position.

HIMES: The vast majority of Americans look at the way ICE behaved, and they say that is not OK, Our position is very simply we want ICE to act like the police force that they are. And that fight is not won yet.

President Trump says the Republican-controlled Senate should end the procedural move known as the filibuster in order to get DHS funding and other bills through.

The filibuster requires 60 votes for any legislation to proceed, giving the minority party the ability to frequently block bills backed by the majority. Wisconsin GOP Senator Ron Johnson tells Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures he agrees, it’s time for the filibuster to go.

JOHNSON: How much [more] broken can the United States Senate get? It’s always been described as the saucer beneath the cup of tea to cool the passions. I’m describing it as, no, it’s more like the plaque in the arteries that are causing a heart attack.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has suggested there aren’t enough votes to end the filibuster.

‘No Kings’ protests » Another round of so-called ‘No Kings’ protests against the Trump Administration drew large crowds across the U.S. this weekend, and there was some violence.

In L.A., rioters threw bottles, rocks, and pieces of cement blocks, hitting and hurting two DHS officers. The LAPD used tear gas and pepper spray on people in the crowd who wouldn’t disperse, and made 75 arrests.

Protests in other cities were peaceful, including the flagship demonstration in Minneapolis, home of all the recent unrest. Democratic Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was among the speakers.

OMAR: In the United States of America, we pledge allegiance to the Constitution and the flag, not to a person or a king.

Other speakers included left-wingers like Bruce Springsteen, Bernie Sanders, and Joan Baez. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller dismissed the protesters, calling them “elderly hippies.”

Plane intercepted near Trump in Florida  » A private aircraft got too close for comfort to President Trump and his plane Sunday afternoon, leading to a short-lived security scare in Palm Beach, Florida.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, dispatched F-16 fighter jets to get the pilot out of the no-fly zone. The F-16s had to fire off some flares to get the pilot’s attention.

There was a brief ground stop for all flights at Palm Beach International Airport, where Air Force One was parked. But the situation was resolved without incident and all operations were quickly back to normal. The Secret Service says the president was never in any danger.

I’m Mark Mellinger.

Straight ahead: Does the phrase ‘Election Day’ have any practical meaning anymore? We’ll explore, in today’s Legal Docket. And later: the legacy of Hank Aaron and his record-breaking home run, through the eyes of his last surviving sibling.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday the 30th of March. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in it.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough. Time now for Legal Docket. If you mail your ballot by Election Day, but it doesn’t arrive until days later, should it still count? That’s the surprisingly simple question before the Supreme Court in Watson versus Republican National Committee.

KAVANAUGH: But it really goes to just thinking about what Election Day or day of election means.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, his colleague Justice Samuel Alito has the same concern:

ALITO: We don’t have a whole lot to go on here. We have the phrase “Election Day” and we have history. If we looked just at the phrase “Election Day” what would we take from that? I think you’ve been saying, and we’re moving in this direction, we don’t have Election Day anymore. We have Election month or we have election months. I mean, the early voting can start a month before the election. The ballots can be received a month after the election.

EICHER: At least 14 states and the District of Columbia seem to think that’s about right. In this case, a Mississippi state law says a mail-in ballot counts as long as it’s received no more than five business days after the election. But federal law preempts state law. And the Republican National Committee and others argue that federal law does not allow a grace period.

That’s the fight in this case. And it’s more complicated than it originally sounds.

ROUGH: The Constitution grants the states broad authority over setting the time, place, and manner of federal elections. But Congress can set limits on them. Here’s how Justice Sonia Sotomayor paraphrased it at oral arguments.

SOTOMAYOR: The Constitution vests the issue of elections in the states unless superseded by Congress. …And absent a law in federal law that suggests that absentee ballots must be received by a certain time.

—then in that case, the state rule controls. For decades, no designated Election Day existed. But starting in 1845, Congress passed a series of statutes that set a uniform day for federal elections: the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November.

Mississippi was one of a number of states that changed its election rules during the COVID-19 pandemic to allow late arrival ballots. But absentee ballots open the door to more fraud, and the rules came under suspicion. After the height of the pandemic, some states retreated. Mississippi left its rule in place.

EICHER: During oral arguments, Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart defended the state law. Stewart argued the federal Election Day statutes set a deadline to cast ballots. What it is is a final choice day.

STEWART: I think a very simple rule is that everybody must cast their ballot by Election Day. I mean, that’s quite administrable.

But he argued the federal laws are silent on the ballot receipt deadline.

STEWART: And I think a state could say, “Hey look federal law didn’t wall us off from doing this.” We get that it has some things about it that other states might weigh differently, but we want to allow that for our voters.

ROUGH: The justices asked hard questions and painted difficult hypotheticals about how various states might allow a mail-in framework. Justice Alito:

ALITO: Aren’t there eight states that do not require a postmark for late ballot?

And how long can a grace period last?

ALITO: Isn’t it the case that some states will count ballots that are received 21 days after Election Day?

Also: To whom and by what means does casting a vote become a final choice? Mississippi accepts ballots through the private carrier FedEx. So what about other non-state officials?

THOMAS: If I give my mail-in ballot to my neighbor …

EICHER: Justice Clarence Thomas.

THOMAS: … is that a choice?

EICHER: Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

BARRETT: If I have someone in my HOA who says, listen, I’m going to take everyone’s votes in, what if the state said that’s fine?

GORSUCH: How about a justice of the United States Supreme Court?

Justice Neil Gorsuch. And he had another question: Can a voter who mailed a ballot recall that ballot?

GORSUCH: So here’s the hypo: Let’s say you have a state where a large portion of the electorate mails in their ballot on or close to election day. Not far-fetched. Many states are like that. Then the day after the election, a story breaks that one of the lead candidates engaged in an inappropriate sexual escapade or perhaps is colluding with a foreign power. Again, not far-fetched, I think. And the competing candidate immediately goes on the airwaves and urges voters to recall their ballots and to tell the common carriers not to deliver them. And many common carriers will do that … FedEx, you just call them up and say I want it back. … Did the election happen on Election Day? Oh, by the way, it swings the election. [Laughter]

ROUGH: On that note, what about the risk of destabilizing an election? An apparent winner who ends up losing because late-arriving ballots put his opponent over the top. Justice Kavanaugh quoted a friend-of-the-court brief to ask about that.

KAVANAUGH: The longer after Election Day any significant changes in vote totals take place, the greater the risk that the losing side will cry that the election has been stolen.

EICHER: But Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson brought the attention back to the legal question in the case.

JACKSON: There are a lot of policy questions. … But the question, I think, is whether Congress has precluded the states from making those calls, drawing those lines. And your position, as I understand it, is no.

STEWART: That’s correct, Your Honor.

JACKSON: That the scantness of Election Day in the federal statutes actually is a point in your favor because it indicates that Congress was leaving it to the states to draw the various lines that might arise in this circumstance. Is that right?

STEWART: That’s right, Your Honor.
…

JACKSON: So if we were focused, really focused, on what we’re asked to answer here, which is are the states pre-empted by federal law from having post-Election Day ballot deadlines, you would say no?

STEWART: No.

ROUGH: The justices also looked to history for answers. Famed Supreme Court litigator Paul Clement argued for the challengers and said history predominantly favors their position. In the mid-19th Century, everyone voted in person. But by the Civil War, states had begun to deviate from that to allow soldiers serving away from home to vote.

Justice Thomas asked Clement about that.

THOMAS: Would you spend a few more minutes … on the voting during Civil War?

CLEMENT: So proxy voting is the thing that happened in the Civil War that is most analogous to absentee voting.

EICHER: Proxy-style voting. Soldiers mailed a ballot home to be cast along with civilian votes.

CLEMENT: And the thing that is most striking is, I think five states had proxy voting, every one of those five states required the votes, the ballots, to be received by election officials back home by Election Day. Now that’s an incredibly inconvenient thing that was done in the Civil War to ensure ballots were received by Election Day.

Another method: field voting. Election officials came to the barracks so soldiers could vote on-site.

CLEMENT: There were about a dozen states that did field voting. … Most of the states went to enormous efforts to replicate the machinery of the ballot box and everything else in the field, and some variation in that. But the one thing that didn’t vary at all was that the ballots had to be received into official custody by Election Day.

So is Election Day a deadline or a duration? Justice Alito weighed in by putting Election Day on par with some of the most recognizable holidays on the American calendar.

ALITO: Labor Day. Memorial Day. George Washington’s birthday. Independence Day. Birthday. And Election Day. And they’re all particular days. So if we start with that, if I have nothing more to look at than the phrase Election Day, I think this is the day in which everything’s going to take place.

The original public meaning. But he acknowledged it’s true that different practices took place during the Civil War. So did that change things?

ALITO: A big exception was made. … It wasn’t everybody going to a particular polling place and voting. So what then can we take from that? Should we just take from that, well, this was an incredible national emergency where extraordinary measures had to be taken.

CLEMENT: I think the thing that would have impressed them is even at a time of great national emergency, every one of the states insisted that the ballots be received into official custody by Election Day. … Nobody said, well, it’s a Civil War, let’s give them a month.

ROUGH: But one big problem for those who want to ban grace periods? If votes don’t count after Election Day, it should reason that they don’t count before Election Day, either.

Justice Elena Kagan:

KAGAN: Every time I sort of try to state what your rule is, it seems to me it’s a rule that prevents early voting. Because you’re basically saying there are two things that have to happen, and they have to happen on Election Day. And it’s the voting, you know, the casting of the vote, and the receipt of the vote. And both of those things have to be on Election Day. And just like a normal person says, okay, when I early-vote, I’m not doing that on that first Tuesday.

Finally, Justice Kavanaugh brought up an important doctrine known as the Purcell principle. Federal courts should not interfere with state election rules close to an election.

KAVANAUGH: If you were to prevail here, and say our decision was issued in June. Purcell issues with the states for the upcoming fall elections?

CLEMENT: I don’t think so. … I think June would give them plenty of time. And remember this issue only affects the general election. It doesn’t affect primaries. … So there’s plenty of time. I don’t think there’s a Purcell problem.

There’s something to be said for uniform federal election procedures. But the Constitution does grant states broad authority. So the court will have to decide if Congress’ Election Day statutes have already set a time limit here, or if Congress has to do more if it wants to.

EICHER: Before we go, very quickly two rulings for you to know.

The Court sided with internet providers in a big copyright case last week, ruling unanimously that providers having “mere knowledge” of their customers pirating music does not expose providers to liability. The court also limited the government’s power to extend supervised release. In an 8-1 vote, the majority decided that even if a defendant goes into hiding, her supervision term does not automatically get extended under federal law.

ROUGH: And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s time now to talk business, markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group, and he is here now. Good morning, David.

DAVID BAHSNEN: Good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: All right. David, let me start with the way last week was kind of being framed in the major media. The New York Times says investors are, quote, unquote, losing patience with the Iran war. Another piece in The Times asks whether we may be looking at a 1970s-style oil shock. Over at The Wall Street Journal, you read stories about growing alarm on Wall Street about the Iran war.

When you see headlines like that, and markets then nearing correction territory, are we looking at real deterioration, or is it more of a temporary sentiment shift? What do you think?

BAHNSEN: Well, there’s a couple different things. The language itself, I expect, whether or not it is true, the language doesn’t create the environment. And then it sometimes might be accurately describing, and other times might not be, but that media language is pretty much assured to be hyperbolic, and then it can sometimes be accidentally or coincidentally correct.

And I guess that’s indicting of the media, but it is also my opinion of the sensationalism by which financial media’s business model operates.

In this particular case, it is rather descriptive that if oil prices stay above 90, around 100, for a period of time, that it becomes very contractionary to the economy. And in terms of what we see at market prices, saying that market indices are down 10% and that’s what we call a correction is just descriptive.

I think that the problem I have, though, is predicting where it goes from here, in the economy, in the market, in commodity prices, when it is based on a particular military or geopolitical outlook that I think is much harder to do.

There isn’t anyone writing in the media that knows exactly where things are going. So if all the language was, Nick, hey, there is going to be a problem in the economy if oil prices stay this high for too much longer, that’s a pretty fair thing to say. Beyond that, some of the more doomsday-ish predictions I think are a little lacking in foundation.

EICHER: Well, David, take us a level deeper, because when you look at the main drivers that you tend to focus on—the labor market, the condition of the financial markets, and corporate profits—what are those things telling you right now?

BAHNSEN: Well, I think that there is a very mixed bag in all three. I think that for whatever reason, we have a very bizarre time right now with data that I referred to in Dividend Cafe as data purgatory.

There’s stuff that just looks really concerning, and other stuff that is, frankly, stubbornly not confirming it.

And so the weekly jobless claims is a data point you and I have talked about a lot over the years. It’s really quite benign. It’s coming in about 210,000 or so per week. And yet, the ADP number, the BLS number, the quits rate, the job openings—there’s all sorts of other data points that are either problematic or indicative of something problematic coming.

So the labor markets are probably what I’m watching most intently, because it is so confusing.

And I would add to that, the financial conditions, in terms of just how loose and available accessible money, and the flow of money, and particularly lending, is in the economy.

You know, tightening financial conditions is a term we use in finance to refer to banks that are wanting to hoard money instead of lend money because they’re getting more risk constrained. There’s less liquidity in the financial system and less appetite to lend it out, either because people are concerned about credit worthiness and concerned about the economy, or just because there’s less credit worthy borrowers and credit worthy projects to lend to.

And again, the data is quite mixed. There’s some indications of financial conditions that are fine, but they are certainly less fine than they were.

The credit spreads, which is kind of the rate above the risk-free rate that certain riskier things cost to borrow money, whether it be structured credit, corporate credit, et cetera, these spreads have widened in the last couple months, but they are not as wide as they would be in a period of extreme distress.

So that purgatory word—just kind of caught between both levels and waiting to see what happens next. And that, to me, is the honest answer right now in an economic assessment.

And if one has a strong opinion that it’s going to break this way or break the other way, somebody can end up being right about that, but that is a prediction of what will come. It is not a description of what is.

EICHER: So David, if the fundamentals are mixed, what is it that’s actually moving markets day to day right now?

BAHNSEN: The volatility right now is up because of Iran. I mean, and oil prices. There’s no question.

This enhanced intraday volatility escalated—and the right description is what you said—that things will be down more in the middle of a day and maybe not close as much down. Or it could be vice versa. You’re having some bigger up days too.

So the average intraday movement from whatever the peak of the day is to whatever the trough of the day is has about tripled since the Iran war started.

And yet, the total market movement of daily prices is thousands upon thousands of points. And yet the net movement from where we were to where we are is down a little less than 5,000 points, right at about 10%.

So it had been only 5%, and it worsened in the week that just was.

Look, I think that enhanced volatility is because there’s some investors that are nervous and skittish, and that usually is going to lead to a lower place, but not as low as the volatility itself.

There are some people trying to time their way in and out of this, and it’s not going very well for them.

EICHER: So if we step back from the day-to-day volatility we see, what would you say, David, is at the root of the uncertainty in the economy?

BAHNSEN: Well, I’m concerned where the economy is headed, in the sense that I’ve been concerned for some time.

Uncertainty means, by definition, that it is not a certain outcome, good or bad. And I don’t think that, generally speaking, the U.S. economy, rooted to a market orientation, should ever have to be uncertain.

I mean, at a high level, often uncertainty is a choice, and I really believe that the uncertainty of the economy, apart from the Iran issues in the last four weeks, has been there for about a year because of Liberation Day and the tariff-oriented policies.

You could get certainty around corporate tax advantages in the new tax bill—that’s a positive certainty there.

You could get certainty about a more favorable U.S. energy policy or deregulation. There’s things in the policy framework that could create more certainty.

But what happened with tariffs is there is just this really big ambiguity about what companies are willing to do with hiring and with capital spending, and that’s been going on for some time.

But that doesn’t mean that it bled through into a really bad outcome, but it certainly bled through into an uncertain one. And that’s where I’ve had the uncertainty for some time, and right now, most of the data points I look at indicate that I’ve been right.

Now, keep in mind, Nick—and it’s important for listeners to hear this—when you hear about certain positive things, there is a very big positive in data center spending.

The total aggregate economic metrics across the country include what’s happening with AI, and we are a few companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on their investment into the power, the computing power necessary for artificial intelligence.

So maybe that ends up being the great savior here.

But it is incredibly rare that one industry can lift the entire economy and offset when a lot of other things are dropping.

I’ve said this on the podcast before. I’ve written about it. I want to elaborate on it more.

But the best analogy I have is what took place with the hydraulic fracturing moment—what we referred to as fracking—in the early 2010s. And that is that we had a significant lift in activity in that one sector, but then almost no activity in any other sector out in the recession that was the financial crisis.

And I feel like that’s happening in a lot of ways right now.

EICHER: All right. David Bahnsen—founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. He writes at DividendCafe.com and at WORLD Opinions. David, hope you have a great week.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

Finally today, the WORLD History Book.

Baseball legend Babe Ruth finished his career with 714 home runs. a record that stood for nearly four decades.

EICHER: That is, until a 40-year-old right fielder from Alabama tied, then broke it.

WORLD’s Myrna Brown takes us back to a week that changed baseball—and revealed something deeper about America.

BASEBALL ANNOUNCER: A three, one pitch. There’s a drive into left field. That ball is going, going and out of here…

MYRNA BROWN, REPORTER: April 4, 1974. Cincinnati.

BASEBALL ANNOUNCER: The crowd has given Aaron a tremendous ovation here. 714 has been hit.

Hank Aaron had finally done it.

HANK AARON ON THE FIELD: Thank you very much. I’m just glad it’s almost over with. Thank you.

Henry Louis Aaron’s teammates and fans knew him as “Hank.” But his family in Mobile, Alabama called him “Main.”

ALFREDIA SCOTT: My Godmother called him Main when he was born because he was so big…close to 13 pounds. And because he was that big, they called him Main…he’s like a man. (laughter)

78-year-old Alfredia Scott is Aaron’s last surviving sister.

ALFREDIA SCOTT: My mother had eight children. Hank was number three.

As a boy, Aaron played unorganized ball in the neighborhood sandlots. Scott says even then, her parents knew Aaron had talent. So when he couldn’t play the game he loved because they couldn’t afford a uniform, his mother made one out of sack cloth.

ALFREDIA SCOTT: They were made out of the material that contained the cloth that you went and got your flour and meal and corn. And put little ribbons down the side to make it look like a baseball suit.

Still in high school, Aaron played for the Mobile Black Bears, a semi-pro baseball team. A year later in 1951, he made brief stops in the Negro Leagues and the minor leagues before settling in with the Milwaukee Braves in 1954. In a 1991 interview, Aaron recalled a decades-old conversation with his father.

HENRY AARON: He always felt like although baseball was there and someday somebody is going to come along and prove that blacks could play it as well as whites, if given the same opportunity. But he never did think…he didn’t know whether that day was going to come soon enough for his son to play baseball.

Aaron was a consistent producer both at the plate and in the field. 1957 was one of his best seasons. He captured the National League MVP Award and led the Braves to their first World Series Championship.. But it wasn’t until the mid-1970s that Aaron grabbed the national spotlight. Alfredia Scott says some people were angry about the prospect of a black athlete surpassing one of sport’s most cherished records.

ALFREDIA SCOTT: Although my brother was highly respected there was still racism that was going on.

Aaron received thousands of letters, including hate mail.

ALFREDIA SCOTT: Somebody always having to guard him. I could hear my mother talking on the phone talking about the fact that she was scared for him.

Then his moment arrived. April 8, 1974:

ANNOUNCER: Once again a standing ovation for Henry Aaron

Fans packed the Atlanta Fulton County Stadium.

RANDY LOUIS COX: I was working as the sports editor of the Valley Times News. That was in Lanette, Alabama about 90 miles from the stadium.

Randy Louis Cox, a twenty-something year-old rookie, says the crowd seemed excited to be part of history.

RANDY LOUIS COX: All these celebrities were there, Sammy Davis Jr., Redd Fox, Jimmy Carter.

ANNOUNCER: One ball and no strikes…

Not far from Cox, near the dugout, Alfredia Scott sat between her mother and her father.

ALREDIA SCOTT: I have to tell you that I was very frightened. And then the crack happened. He hit the ball.

ANNOUNCER MILO HAMILTON: Here’s the pitch by Downing…swinging..that ball is going be….outta here! It’s gone! It’s 715!

After Atlanta Braves Announcer Milo Hamilton made the dramatic call, the stands erupted with applause. That’s when Scott says her elderly mother bolted towards her son on the field.

ALFREDIA SCOTT: I wondered how in the world that woman got out of that seat. She jumped over the rails and she ran toward first base.

Scott says the threats against her son's life propelled her mother into action.

ALFREDIA SCOTT: If you break this record you will never touch home plate. And that’s what stuck in my mother’s mind.

As Aaron rounded the bases, Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully provided the memorable play by play.

ANNOUNCER SCULLY: He threw his arms around his father and as he left the home plate area his mother came running across the grass threw her arms around his neck and kissed him for all she was worth…. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the deep South for breaking a record of an all time baseball idol.

Randy Louis Cox took about 100 photographs that night and made front page news.

RANDY LOUIS COX: Aaron swats number 715 to break Ruth’s record…that was my headline.

Today 76-year-old Cox is a retired author. He kept all of those photographs and wrote a book about Henry Aaron's big night in baseball.

Aaron hit his final 755th home run in 1976. He was elected to the Hall of Fame six years later. Henry Aaron passed away in 2021 at the age of 86 and was often regarded as a model of humility, dignity and quiet competence.

HANK AARON:. And I’m certainly not going to sit here and tell you or anybody else that I was as great a ball player as Babe Ruth. That’s for other people to judge me by. And I think only time and history will put me in my property place. I think eventually people are going to say, he belongs where he’s supposed to be on top, or second or third. That’s where he’s supposed to be.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: the Houthis escalate in the Iran conflict. We’ll talk with an expert about what it could mean for the U.S. And, acoustics in church: how to make worship sound its best. 

That and more tomorrow. I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says, “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: ‘How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?

Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. 

Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.’” —Psalm 82:1-4

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.