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Mass Deportations to Begin; Exchanging Fires in Gaza; Hank Aaron's Career

Aired July 12, 2014 - 16:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MIGUEL MARTINEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Good afternoon. You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Miguel Marquez in New York.

We're keeping our eye on two major stories right now. Both developing. The United States has something to say it would be illegal immigrants "don't try it, we will send you back." Mass deportations are about to start and it's something you'll only see on CNN desperate people in south Central America crossing dangerous borders hoping to eventually reach America.

And in the Middle East this weekend more people killed. More people pushed from their homes. Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza continue to exchange fire. Palestinian health officials now say more than 1,000 people have been injured by Israeli artillery fire and air strikes. That's in addition to 135 people reportedly killed in Gaza.

Israel says their targets are strategic. Hamas militants in Gaza say they're just defending themselves even though they fired hundreds of rockets into Israel this week. Our senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman is in Gaza now.

Ben, you just heard those updated casualty figures reported by the Palestinians. Look, the situation is escalating there. How far do they think it's going to go there on the ground in Gaza?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Miguel, I can add to those figures. Within the last hour there have been two air strikes near Gaza City leaving at least 15 people dead. 40 wounded. So, definitely the situation is escalating. In addition to that, we're hearing reports that Israel has ordered the residents of northern Gaza, who number more than 100,000, to leave their area, that area, for their own safety.

Now, earlier we saw repeated volleys of rockets fired from in and around Gaza city, toward Israel. The Israelis saying most of those rockets were either intercepted or landed harmlessly in open areas. But also in addition to that, we know from the radio, we have - we monitor the walkie-talkie chatter of the Hamas police and security. They are on extremely high alert this evening with fears that a ground incursion is indeed coming. Miguel?

MARQUEZ: Well, the Israelis made arrangements for up to 40,000 reservists to be called up. They have already called up more than 35,000 of them. It seems that a ground invasion may be in the offing. Typically these situations the Egyptians get involved in order to head off or to end these sort of situations.

But it seems that the violence is only going up. Is there any sense there in Gaza City that the Egyptians have - have been bringing anything to the table, any possibility of bringing this to an end before it becomes bigger?

WEDEMAN: No. The situation this time around is much different from the last flare-up I covered in November 2012, when Mohammad Morsi, the then Egyptian president, mediated between the Israelis and Hamas and was able to work out after eight days a cease-fire. This time around you have a different man in the chair in Cairo, President Abdul Fatah Hassisi who is hostile to Hamas which, of course, is the Palestinian offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood which he spent the last year cracking down on.

So, the Egyptians aren't going to step in. Now, there's word that the Qataris are involved. They do have lines of communications with both Hamas and the Israelis. But really it seems at the moment any mediation effort is on the back burner. Israel is gearing up, as we've seen, for a ground invasion. Hamas - you don't see preparations in the street for it, but I spoke with one Hamas official who says if the Israelis enter Gaza, we will have surprises for them.

MARQUEZ: Oh, dear god. Ben Wedeman for us in Gaza City. Keep yourself and your crew safe. Thanks, man.

Passengers got quite a scare when they smelled something burning on a United Airlines flight over the Pacific Ocean. The Boeing 777 was on its way from Honolulu to Guam when it began losing power and made an emergency landing on a tiny midway island. One passenger said people were shaking and crying. The plane was carrying 348 passengers and crew. Passengers were on the island for about seven hours before another plane took them back to Honolulu.

CNN's safety analyst David Soucie joins me now on the phone. David, pretty darn unusual for a 777 to warrant an emergency landing. How serious was this?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Yes, it's very unusual. This is one of the most reliable airplanes in the air right now. It is very serious. It could have been something very serious. Like an electrical failure of some kind. But it can also be something as simple and innocuous as a coffeepot heater that got burned and didn't have enough coffee and burned it up, too, so we really don't know at this point much about what happened.

MARQUEZ: Of course, everyone's mind goes to MH-370, the Malaysian Airline that went missing. Something similar to that. It does not sound like the same thing. But is it at all possible?

SOUCIE: No. The only thing that would give us a clue that it had any relation whatsoever was that one of the passengers that reported that the electricity started going in and out during the emergency landing but that was from the passenger and it was supposedly in the cockpit so I really don't think it's a credible source there. So I think at this point it's way too early to make any kind of connection with that. But it was definitely a frightening experience for those passengers, I guarantee that.

MARQUEZ: 777 has been a workhorse for many airlines and a big moneymaker for Boeing. Is there a problem with the 777?

SOUCIE: No. I wouldn't say so. It's, again, too early to say that we've got some kind of a systemic failure of any kind. Every airline has and every airplane has its unique problems here and there. And those - that's why we have triple redundancy in these airplanes. So, at this point there's nothing for anybody to worry about other than the fact that something did occur for those passengers on that airplane.

As far as a systemic failure, I don't see anything going on with that particular model of aircraft.

MARQUEZ: How intense is the investigation going to be given the MH-370 situation, given the Asiana Airlines at San Francisco airport and now this? How intense is that going to be by both the airline, Boeing, and the FAA?

SOUCIE: It's going to be very intense right now because of these things. They're going to try to find out if there was indeed a link between these. But I was out in Hawaii as a safety inspector for three years. During that time those long flights over to Guam had numerous problems with trying to get over there and trying to get back and, remember, there's only one place to land, halfway between, that's why they call it midway.

So you have to be super critical about what you have available on the airplane. So yes, it will be very closely scrutinized by the NTSB, the FAA, Boeing and by the airline, especially by United Airlines.

MARQUEZ: Well, thank god everything was fine. There's a lot of water out there as you point out and very few bits of land. David Soucie for us, thank you very much.

Next, a CNN exclusive, we're talking with Hammering Hank on this weekend before major league baseball's all-star game. The legendary Hank Aaron on his life, segregation, and his haul of fame career.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MARQUEZ: Well, as major league baseball prepares to take its annual midseason break for the all-star game, we have a special treat. A rare, extended interview with Hank Aaron, one of the game's greatest players.

He spoke with cnn.com sports contributor Terence Moore about much more than sports, his childhood, living under segregation and how Jackie Robinson inspired him to speak out on issues far beyond the baseball field.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) TERENCE MOORE, CNN.COM SPORTS CONTRIBUTOR: You know, I always thought it was ironic on April 15th, 1947, Jackie Robinson breaks the color barrier. You hit that home run to top Babe Ruth on April 8th, 1974. That's like almost 27 years almost to the date, and he was your hero and I always was fascinated by that story that you told me when you first saw Jackie Robinson when you were a kid.

HANK AARON, HALL OF FAMER: of course, back then I was - my mother - my parents expected me to go to school, and I had read about what Jackie and the Dodgers were going to play an exhibition game in Mobile, and Jackie was speaking I believe at a drugstore. I said, now, I'm not going to have this opportunity again, so I said I better take my chance on listening to Jackie Robinson now. And little did I know that I got front row seat -

MOORE: Oh, wow.

AARON: But listen to this, next to me on the front row was my father.

MOORE: Oh, man.

AARON: But it was worth it.

MOORE: Yes, yes.

AARON: And I don't need to tell you what happened after.

MOORE: Wow.

AARON: But it was worth it, though, really. But he was - but he was my hero, always have been. And not only for what the baseball that he played but simply because of the person he was.

MOORE: Now, after that did you guys encounter each other through the years either when he was playing or afterwards?

AARON: Well, I signed my contract with the Boston Braves, I was able to play exhibition games against the Dodgers and who do I play against but Jackie Robinson, who played maybe eight, nine, 10 exhibition games against each other. And it was - let me say, it was a thrill.

MOORE: He was a guy that was sort of the social conscious of baseball and after he died it affected you a lot, where you kind of felt like you had to be the next Jackie Robinson.

AARON: It did. It did affect me. In fact, there was no improvement as far as minorities in baseball other than on the playing field.

MOORE: Right.

AARON: And he wanted to see minorities even elevated not only on the playing field but also in the front office. He felt like one step at a time, which we always talk about, and we had gotten to the point where we were - had showed everybody that we could play the game of baseball. So, he was telling everybody just give us a chance now to be coaches and instructors and people that we can do in the front office. MOORE: I've always admired you from the standpoint even back then, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, you had these prominent black players at the time who could have come up and stepped up and did something and been outspoken about things that were going on. You were the only one. Did you feel sort of lonely being out there sort of by yourself?

AARON: Well, yes, I did, in some ways. But then I - then I thought that, you know, if you're not going to do it right, then don't do it at all, you know. I realized that the people that you just mentioned had other things. Their agenda was made up of other things.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: Terence Moore joins us now, cnn.com sports contributor and columnist for mlb.com and luckiest guy in the world to talk to Hank Aaron. How cool. Terence, Mr. Aaron told you he felt obligated to speak out about civil rights when some other baseball players, baseball stars at the time kept quiet. How big an impact did he have?

MOORE: Well, it was huge. The thing, Miguel, was timing was perfect for Hank Aaron because remember, now, the Braves moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta in 1966 with Hank Aaron. And back then Atlanta was the hub of the civil rights movement because this is the home of Dr. King. And the other thing is that was a year after the Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress, two years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, and in addition to that he became very close, Hank Aaron, to Andrew Young who was one of Dr. King's right hand men and future U.N. ambassador and they both live here in Atlanta.

But one other quick aspect here, while in Milwaukee, Hank befriended a person by the name of Bud Selig. Bud Selig later went on to become commissioner of baseball in the early 1990s, he's still the commissioner of baseball. And I want to tell you something, Miguel, Hank Aaron has whispered more than a few things into Bud's ear about civil rights and African-Americans in baseball.

MARQUEZ: It's amazing, you have this entire history, this whole little piece of Americana right there in front of you, incredible. Terence, stick around. Next we want to talk about his chase for Babe Ruth's home run record, the pressures and even death threats that came with it, coming right up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MARQUEZ: Now, we're back with CNN.com's sport contributor Terence Moore, an all-around lucky guy and conversationalist with baseball legend Hank Aaron. Terence, the second part of your interview you asked him about his pursuit of baseball's home-run record and what it felt like to hit that historic home run.

MOORE: Yes. And do you know what? He got very emotional talking about this. April 8th, 1974, is a huge day in history, in baseball, in the history of sports, in the history of this country, but it was really huge for a guy named Henry Louis Anderson, Henry Louis Aaron - sorry about this. I'll tell you something about Henry is that no matter how much he tries to convey, how much pressure he was under, there's no way we could tell what he was but he did as good a job in this interview as I've ever heard talking about what it was like.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MOORE (on camera): You know, leading up to April 8th, 1974, when you broke Babe Ruth's record and it's just amazing to me how you were able to hit a baseball consistently with all that stuff whirling around you, with the hate mail and the evilness that you experienced all the time. How did you mentally, physically, and spiritually get yourself ready every game to go out there and play despite all that stuff that's around you?

AARON: In spite of all of the things that I went through, and you mentioned some of them, I've always been able to separate the two. I always felt like once I got my uni - once I put the uniform on and once I got on the playing field, that I could separate the two from, say, an evil letter I got the day before or even 20 minutes before. That I could also concentrate on what I had to do as far as trying to watch a fastball or somebody throwing a ball 90 miles an hour rather than worrying about a letter that somebody sent.

MOORE: Do you ever wonder sometime how much - how much - what you would have done without all that stuff? Could you hit, like, 900 home runs instead of the 755?

AARON: That is one thing I often think about, you know, nobody ever asked the question. If I had had the means, if somebody had said, "Oh, Hank, come on, you know, let's go out and have dinner tonight rather than worrying about slipping out of the back doors of ballparks and staying in a hotel that your ball players or your teammates were not there, I don't know what I would have done.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unless you've been stranded on a desert or in a boat without communications for the past 20 hours, you're bound to know that George Herman Ruth ceased to be the greatest home-run hitter at about 9:00 p.m. last night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hank Aaron.

MOORE: Let's go back to that day April 8th, just a fascinating day. You hit the home run, OK, and it's going toward left center field, Atlanta County Stadium, Al Downing is the pitcher. You're running toward first base. Let's just stop right there. What do you think about when you're going to first base?

AARON: Not much of anything. I think when I touched first base and when I got almost to second base, I started thinking about - I started thinking about isn't this wonderful that here I am, the third oldest child of Estella and Herbert Aaron, and the two of them is sitting in the stand watching me, their son, play professional baseball. Isn't it wonderful that they could be here on this day to witness history. And I tell you, to this day I don't know how, how she managed to do it. She got to home plate quicker than I got to home plate.

MOORE: That's a great scene. And she was just the tears are flowing.

AARON: Yes, yes. MOORE: What was said during that moment when you were at home plate and she's there hugging you?

AARON: I don't think much was said because she was choking me so bad. I don't think I could say much, you know, really.

MOORE: When you are running around the bases, I never will forget that, you hear that bang bang. They were fireworks, but were you thinking something else?

AARON: No, not really. I wasn't thinking much of anything. You know, a good friend, speaking about that, a very good friend of mine he's on the police department at that time, I don't know whether you know this, but in a picture that you see, you see him had a little briefcase, had a little thing around his neck.

MOORE: I've seen that, yes.

AARON: And inside that little thing it was a snub-nosed 0.32 and he told me, "Hank, I just didn't know what to do when you started running around the bases and those two guys started running behind you." I said, "I'm glad you didn't shoot, because they would have it" - those two guys was having nothing but just fun, that's all.

MOORE: I can remember very clearly that Monday the day that you hit the home run, the parents and the two brothers and I gathered around the television set. It was very similar, it had to be to where perhaps you and others back on April 15th, 1947, gathered around the radio for Jackie Robinson. You were our Jackie Robinson. Did you get the sensation of how important you were to the black community with what you were doing, what you were going through?

AARON: Yes, I did. In some ways I felt the importance of what I was doing was really sending a signal to the world, was telling people that, "hey, yes, all you wanted to do was having the playing field level. Just give me an opportunity." Yes, I felt that way.

I felt that way that not only that I had a - I had the world on my shoulders as far as baseball was concerned, but also had the world on my shoulders to demonstrate to people that, "hey, just give me opportunity." But at the same time, you know, if you think about it, you know, Dr. King was marching and the civil rights was at its peak, you know, and we was telling people just give us a chance to drink water out of a fountain or go to the bathroom or go to the - anywhere , you know, really. And all those things had something to do with the way I was doing as far as playing baseball.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: Terence, this interview brings up so many things. One, you guys make me a little misty even just talking about what was he thinking going to first base. I wasn't thinking about anything. He doesn't think about himself, he thinks about his parents. How sweet is that. Lovely. This is a guy that had so much vile nastiness o, hurled at him as he made his way through his career. What is that ability in his psyche, in his mind, to keep those things separate? All the nastiness but to focus on the game?

MOORE: You know, I think it was a combination of two things. You mentioned the focus and that's a big part of it. The other thing is I've talked to a lot of athletes through the years, over the last 35, 37 years and he is one of the most, if not the most compassionate superstars, persons, I've ever met. You combine that compassion with focus, that was a big part of it. And, you know, I was listening to that interview and I was thinking that - I said back then that maybe he could have hit over 900 home runs, I think maybe 1,000 if he was able not to have all this other stuff. Because even though he had to be the most focused baseball player of all-time even with all the stuff going on, you got to think, Miguel, that at least two percent of the time he's thinking about some crackpot out in the stands and this is pre-911 when you didn't have a lot of security.

I mean, goodness knows, I mean, to go old school TV, to the moon, Alice, with the number of records he could have set if he could have totally concentrated on just baseball.

MARQUEZ: Amazing. I want to know where the two guys who ran out after him, I want to know where they are right now too. Terence Moore, thank you so much. It was fantastic.

MOORE: Thank you.

MARQUEZ: Tune in for more, this is an exclusive interview, tomorrow at 6:00 Eastern right here on CNN.

Now what does it take to cross national borders?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) and we'll go long on this raging rapid trip.

Hello.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUEZ: Now, coming up we'll going to show you more of Gary Tuchman and how he did it, coming up, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MARQUEZ: Now, we've been focusing a lot on undocumented migrants from Central America crossing into the U.S. from Mexico, but how does someone from Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador get into Mexico in the first place? CNN's Gary Tuchman demonstrates from Guatemala. It's very cheap and very easy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Right under where you can legally cross this is where you illegally cross. Right under this border station. This is the raft. The inner tube, the wood. We paid our (INAUDIBLE) this is equivalent to $1.30 and we're going to along in this raging rapid trip.

Hello. Can I go with you? What you should know is these people they tell us they are not planning to go to the United States. They just want to go to Mexico. We ready? OK.

Everyone here is quiet. You got to duck your head so you don't get decapitated by the rope and we've now crossed the international boundary and we're in the nation of Mexico.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: Well, you'll see much more of Gary Tuchman's reporting at the top of the hour when we air a special one-hour report "The Crisis at the Border." But first "SANJAY GUPTA, M.D." begins right now.