Gil Hodges is a Hall of Famer [by Greg Pattenaude]

On Sunday evening, longtime Brooklyn Dodgers first baseman and 1969 Mets manager Gil Hodges was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  It has been a long journey for a player who retired in 1963 when his aging knees could no longer hold up.

When Hodges retired, he had set a record of 370 home runs by a National League right-handed hitter and was 10^th on the all-time home run list.  His 14 career grand slams ranked first in the National League.  He was an all-star eight times, won three Gold Gloves for best defensive first baseman in the first three years that the Gold Glove awards were given out, and was only second to teammate Duke Snyder in most Dodger offensive records.  

But baseball’s greatest honor, a place in the Hall of Fame, eluded him.  As time went on, his accomplishments were diluted, replaced by others who exceeded him in performance and advanced statistics that diminish a human into a Stratomatic playing card.  

In Brooklyn, he was a fan favorite and a quiet leader in the clubhouse.  He lived with his wife Joan and his family in Flatbush year-round.  Legend says he was the only “Brooklyn Bum” who was never booed, adopted as one of their own.  Even after a horrible end to the 1952 season, when he went hitless in 26 World Series at bats, and a slow start in 1953, the community’s answer was to pray for him, later the title of a 2006 book by Thomas Oliphant.  

So did prayer alone get him in this time?  

According to the rules set by the Hall of Fame, “voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”

Pay close attention to the last four criteria, none of which can be captured by any amount of advanced analytics.  Mets broadcaster Howie Rose was one of the first to note that it is a person’s complete resume that should be weighted.  Many players from the 1969 Mets went on record saying that if it wasn’t for Gil’s leadership as manager, none would have been World Series champs.  But it may have been longtime Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully who went to bat for Gil’s induction, offering this high praise:

“Gil stood out as not only one of the game’s finest first basemen but also as a great American and an exemplary human being, someone who many of us were in awe of because of his spiritual strength. I often heard Dodgers players refer to Gil as a “saint.”

I am too young to have ever seen Gil play.  I knew he was an original Met and hit their very first home run during their first game in 1962.  I certainly remember him as a manager who provided an eleven-year old a great summer and fall in 1969.  But I did have a mom who saw him play at Ebbets Field, so I knew he was special.  And the night the Mets clinched the Eastern Division title on September 24, 1969, when the team was celebrating afterwards, my mother was most concerned for Gil, on the one-year anniversary of the heart attack he had suffered in Atlanta.  Sadly less than three years later, Gil would be gone.

I’ll leave you with these two scenes from entertainment, both fictional but probably based on something the writer felt or experienced.  In the movie Field of Dreams, when “Shoeless” Joe Jackson is telling Ray Kinsella about the players in Ray’s corn field playing ball, it could have been just about any of the former departed greats.  But screenwriter and director Phil Robinson chose Gil Hodges to be one of them.  And in the 1991 CBS TV show Brooklyn Bridge, about a Jewish family in the 1950s, there is a scene in the first episode.   The grandparents take their young grandson, decked out in his Dodgers uniform, to get Gil’s autograph at the Brooklyn Union Savings Bank.  Earlier in the episode, the grandfather had told his grandson that he knew Gil and played with Gil in Russia, which of course wasn’t true.  When the grandson tells that to Mr. Hodges, Gil looked surprised but then says oh yes, I played with him.  He was on the Bears; it’s good to see you.  The grandfather asked Gil if he knew Yiddish, which Gil didn’t, but said you should know what a mensch is, because that’s you.  

Gil has now found his place in the Hall of Fame.  Congratulations to the Hodges family for never giving up and Gil’s 96 year-old widow Joan.  

Comments

[David Lehman]

Great piece. The induction was long overdue, and it is splendid that Gil goes in to join his teammates Snider, Reese, Campanella, Robinson, Koufax, and Drysdale. (In the Brooklyn Dodgers hall of fame, if there were such a thing, they'd be joined, too, by Junior Gilliam, Carl Furillo, and Johnny Podres.) I remember the home runs Hodges hit to help LA beat the Chisox in the 1959 World Series. And I completely agree that the individual's whole resume is what should count. Gil Hodges was, as manager, the peerless leader of the 1969 World Champion Mets, as much a face of the team as Tom Seaver, and he also did pretty well in his arguments with umpires in that series, as I am sure youy remember. Thanks for writing this article.