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His Grace Magazine!
May 2022
Willie Aikens
Willie, after going to Prison, found Jesus Christ
W
illie Mays Aikens was born on October 14, 1954 in Seneca, South Carolina. He grew up in poverty in the Bruce Hill community of Seneca. He was a standout athlete in baseball, football and basketball at his Seneca High School. Willie also went to the historically black South Carolina State University on a baseball and football scholarship. Willie was drafted in the first round of the MLB 1975 draft by the California Angels. After he had 101 plate appearances in 1977, he became a steady regular for the Angels and in 1979, he hit 21 home runs and 81 RBI's in only just 379 at bats that season. After that season, Willie was traded to the
Kansas C i t y Royals where he started to shine as a baseball player; he smashed 20 home runs followed by 98 RBI's during the 1980 season. During that season, Willie
became the first Major League baseball player to hit 2 home runs in a twice World Series game. Willie played for the Kansas City Royals until he was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays during the season of 1984. There he played 2 seasons for the Blue Jays, but at this point Will had a drug problem and his career in baseball was gone. Willie was labelled by so many as the next Reggie Jackson. But unfortunately, he didn't listen to the advice of so many of his teammates, and he took himself out of the game of baseball and right into the lengthiest prison sentence ever given to a professional athlete, as he received over 20 years. It was the drug of crack cocaine that put him in there. Willie spent his time at Atlanta Penitentiary. He was scheduled to be released in 2012 but was released on June 4, 2008...three months after Congress approved new guidelines for the federal drug laws and made them retroactive. A former teammate of Willie's, Hal McRae, was the only one of his former Kansas City teammates that talked with him while he was in prison. Hal helped Willie get a job in construction working on manholes. Since Willie's release from prison, he has spoken at schools about all that he went through, and
