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What: “Home Run: My Life in Pictures”

Author: Hank Aaron, with Dick Schaap

Publisher: Total Sports ($39.95)

This is a lavishly illustrated look at Aaron, the home run hitter and man, stitched together in a series of essays by the likes of Schaap, George F. Will, Bob Costas, Joe Torre, Peter Gammons and Joe Morgan.

The theme is consistency--20 consecutive years of no fewer than 20 nor more than 47 home runs, a relentless, inexorable march to Babe Ruth’s career home run record and beyond.

Writes Will: “Real baseball people understand that the best thing you can have in a sport with a long season is consistency. Henry Aaron, by that measure, is the greatest baseball player ever, period, end of discussion.”

Will points out Aaron’s home run production remained constant even as the game swung toward high-performance relief pitching.

“I have always wanted to know what Ty Cobb batted in his fourth at-bats in games,” Will wrote.

“I bet it was around .600. By the eighth or ninth inning, Cobb had the luxury of batting against the same tired pitcher that he had seen three times before. Now, by the third at-bat, you’re facing some flamethrower whose job it is to get to the next flamethrower.”

Aaron himself, 23 years into retirement, makes it clear he hasn’t forgotten who came before him.

Referring to Jackie Robinson, he wrote, “It bothers me, really bothers me, when I meet young black players who have little, or no, idea of who Jackie Robinson was.”

And this, to his fans: “What I would like them to remember about me is not the home runs or the hits or the runs batted in, but that I was concerned about the well-being of other people.”