ESPN's Website To Celebrate Hank Aaron With Night Of Cosplay

Forty years ago today, Hank Aaron hit the 715th home run of his career, surpassing Babe Ruth's mark of 714 and setting the all-time career home run record. Even with Barry Bonds having long since surpassed the record, this is one of the great moments in American sports history, more than worth marking out with special commemorations. ESPN.com, instead, is going to stage some kind of bizarre reenactment.

Here's a press release from ESPN:

ESPN.com is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Hank Aaron's record-breaking 715th home run with a special reenactment titled Aaron's 715: Live in 2014. ESPN.com will cover the events leading up to – and through – Aaron's historic achievement in real time, as if it were happening live.

ESPN.com will utilize a live-event application to aggregate photos, videos and reports, beginning at 7:15 p.m. ET. The coverage will continue past 9:07 p.m., the time that Aaron hit number 715 on his record-breaking night. ESPN MLB Insider Jayson Stark will serve as the "on site" reporter, providing news reports, stats and player reaction throughout the evening. Additionally, ESPN senior writer Howard Bryant will host a live chat during the event on ESPN.com's MLB section.

ESPN viewers and Major League Baseball fans can join the conversation on Twitter, using hashtag #Aaron715. Aaron broke Babe Ruth's home run record on April 8, 1974 in a game between his Atlanta Braves and the Los Angeles Dodgers at Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, Ga.

This sounds like it's going to be... terrible. Hank Aaron was an awesome baseball player who deserves to have his career celebrated, but why not just, you know, run a few nice retrospective stories about Aaron and maybe film a nostalgic, soft-focus video essay to run on SportsCenter? Who actually wants to spend the night reading Jayson Stark's make-believe on-the-scene updates? They're not even going all-in and mocking up a CGI Aaron. Hell, an oral history would be better than this.

[ ESPN]