All those years toiling on the mound, peering down the long alley toward the plate at those constant
disturbers of his sense of well - being settling into their stances and flicking their bats — and then to look down one day and find Henry Aaron there, the large, peaceful, dark face with the
big eyes and the high forehead, and to know that one mistake, one small lapse of concentration, would place the pitcher's name forever in the record books as having thrown the «immortal gopher.»