Hank Aaron sees echoes of "what I had to face" in the way Serena Williams was treated

For Hank Aaron, the backlash that Serena Williams has experienced after his defeat in Saturday's final at U. Open was too familiar.

The Hall of Famer Baseball was faced with a lot of ugliness while he was chasing the Major League Baseball record in the 1970s and, in an interview with Forbes, he stated that Williams' critics – there including an Australian newspaper drawing of his own past.

"It goes back to what I had to face when I was running after Babe Ruth's home race records, because I think all of this with Serena is so rude and so cruel," he said. told Terence Moore. "I spent 23 years in baseball. And then, before I knew it, I was getting all this hostile mail and all that in the last two years. And with Serena, I started thinking about these things again.

Looking at the women's final between Williams and Naomi Osaka from home in Atlanta, Aaron saw Williams react angrily when chair umpire Carlos Ramos warned him of his training, a practice common in tennis but rarely sanctioned. When she broke her racket, Ramos gave her a point. When Williams called him a thief and asked for an apology, he moored him to a match, a terrible punishment in the final of a Grand Slam tournament. Williams lost 6-2, 6-4, the defeat sparking a wide debate about potential sexism and the double standard in tennis.

"I saw how Serena was looked after, then I thought about going back to my locker as a player someday, and there was [a reporter] in my chair, "said Aaron, who endured racist provocations and death threats as he headed for Babe Ruth's file. "I said something to get him out and he wrote a letter to [then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn]and the commissioner wrote to me saying, "If you start again, I'll suspend you from baseball."

It's something, Aaron told Moore, that he'd never mentioned it publicly before.

"I thought of these things looking at Serena, and I said," This kid played all those years, and I do not think she was ever accused of cheating before she got produce saturday. " [tennis coaches]they cheat all, no matter how you look at it. They are sitting there in the bleachers saying, "Go over here. Do this. "

The Williams incident made headlines this week, with personalities such as Billie Jean King and Katrina Adams, who said that tennis had double standards: the men and Martina Navratilova and Mary Carillo. , Defending the rules of tennis.

The incident prompted tennis referees to consider boycotting Williams' games in the future. Ramos, who is scheduled to play Davis Cup games this week between the United States and Croatia, told Tribuna Expresso in his home country that "I'm fine, given the circumstances," according to USA Today. "It's a delicate situation," Ramos said, "but there's no such thing as" à la carte "arbitration. Do not worry about me! "

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