GIL HODGES AND GOLDEN ERA COMMITTEE PICKS HALL OF FAME INDUCTIES

Fifty years since he passed away in 1972 and they’re still talking about him. Me, I’ve been talking about him since he became eligible as a Baseball Hall of Fame candidate.

Finally, I can stop talking up Gil Hodges for something he deserved. Now they can finally celebrate his induction. Have I been the only one wondering why every four years when the candidates were listed, there was no call for Hodges to reach Cooperstown, where all the H of F members were enshrined?

Of course not.

Now I was born and raised in Brooklyn, and in my middle school years I didn’t have any teams I especially rooted for. But my friends, they were all Brooklyn Dodgers fans, and we had to take two buses to get to Ebbets Field, where I just watched the game as my friends cheered for “Dem Bums”.

.

I wasn’t one of them, but I did have respect for the Dodgers and one of my favorites was Hodges. Why? Well, I always admired the way he played first, a rather new position for him. He’d be great at picking up low throws, high throws, stepping quickly off the bag after he caught the ball. He was quite, he didn’t usually make conversion with the base runner, he just played the game.

But he didn’t get the publicity the others players got. Robinson was Robinson. He was black and Hodges admired the man who stood up for his people and became the first to make it to the major leagues. Robinson had been a first baseman at Montreal, but said he’d be just fine moving over to play second base, and he and Hodges even shook hands to make the changeover.

Campy was Campy. He provided leadership, he was a fan favorite. Shortstop Pee Wee Reese was the team captain, wore No.1, and got along very well with Robby and Campy. The outfield, Carl Furillo in right, Duke Snider in center and usually Andy Pafko in left, and playing the hot corner was shorthanded Billy Cox.

Hodges? He got along with each and every one. They are all gone, but he now joins Reese, Robinson, Snider and Campanella in the Hall of Fame. It took a long time and me, who became a New York Giants fan when the great Willie Mays came up in 1951, but later on and through all these years I was so upset that Hodges wasn’t getting enough votes to make it to Cooperstown.

So I thank the Golden Era Committee that chose him from a list of eight candidates, getting enough votes along with outfielder Minnie Minoso, pitcher Jim Kaat, ourfielder Tony Oliva, and Buck O’Neil, a superstar in the Negro League who became the first Black coach in the American and National Leagues.

Roger Maris, another one of my favorites and it’s a mystery why he hasn’t be named to the Hall. Infielder Dick Allen, who was Richie Allen with the Chicago White Sox and Dick Allen with the Philadelphia Phillies, was short one vote.

Getting back to Hodges, with the Dodgers he was one of the top sluggers in the National League. He played 18 years in the big leagues, clouted 370 home runs, second all-time on the Dodgers to center-fielder Duke Snider, who homered 389 times, and he had a career batting average of .275 to go with

1,274 runs batted in, fourth all-time in Dodgers history.

He also won four Golden Gloves, led the league in putouts four times, ld the league in games played five times, in assists four times, and in double plays six times sand three times he was among the leading candidates for the National League’s Most Valuable Player honors. The highest he finished was third.

No matter, he handled it like a pro and was complimented by Robinson, who really liked Hodges and considered him as a big brother. Campanella once said that Gil had been the one who kept Jackie happy in these racism times.

“He stood by him,” said Campy, “and Jackie appreciated it.”

Hodges loved God, his country, and his family. When I was eligible to vote when and after I covered the New York Mets and New York Yankees, one of my votes always included Hodges.

After two years with the Montreal Royals, he was called up to join the Brooklyn Dodgers, who needed a catcher and that’s where they put him. But soon after Roy Campanella followed Jackie Robinson to the big leagues, Campy was a catcher, and so the 6-foot-4 Hodges became the first baseman.

This became one of the better lineups in baseball history, but each time they played the Yankees in the World Series the Bronx team owned, they lost. They had been such a unified group, they wondered when they, too, could hang the World Series championship banner at Ebbets Field, their home in the borough of Brooklyn.

In 1955, the Dodgers won their first World Series finally beating the men in pinstripes, the Bronx Bombers, in seven games that brought a parade through the streets of Flatbush where Ebbets Field was, where it’s now the Jackie Robinson Apartments, where about six blocks away was the house where Hodges and his wife Joan lived, where Joan, now 95, remained until being placed in a retirement home in 2000.

Sometimes that’s unheard of, but Gil and Joan wanted to have neighbors and these were different times and that’s where Gil and Joan wanted to be, even when he became a member of the New York Mets when they formed in 1962, were managed by Casey Stengel, and played at the ancient Polo Grounds that the Giants left in 1957 with the Dodgers to set up shop in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

That was now Gil’s final stop after before he retired in 1963. In the first week  of the ’62 season he hit the first-ever Mets’ home run on an inside-the-park four-bagger that bounced around at the vast Polo Grounds, and No. 14 remained as a bench and first base coach for Stengal.

In 1966 he we named the Mets’ new manager as No. 37, Casey, retired. Three years later, Stengel was calling Hodges’ team the “Amazin’ Mets.” It was that eventful year of 1969 that he managed a team mixed with some newcomers and veterans to win the World Series and parade down Fifth Avenue.

Ed Kranepool was on that team after he signed upon graduating at Columbus High in the Bronx. He was one of the original players. When he learned that Hodges was elected into the Hall of Fame, he lit up, had plenty to say.

“Let me tell you something,” Kranepool said,”If Gill wasn’t the manager we never would have won that World Series. He made boys into men, he treated everyone equally, his office door was always opened and he never told a player to come back later. He knew how to win and that’s what made us.”

The Mets had won the NL pennant by defeating the Atlanta Braves in a best-of-five series. They had lost game one in Atlanta with Tom Seaver pitching and won game two there with Jerry Koosman on the mound. Then they played game three at Shea Stadium, their new home, and won it when Hodges pitch-hit for catcher Jerry Grote and Art Shamsky belted a two-run home run into the right field seats.

In game four, with the hard-hitting Braves filling the bases with no out in the eighth inning, Hodges brought in tall and slim youngster Nolan Ryan. He went to a full-count pitch to Orlando Cepeda and struck him out on one of his blazing fastballs. Next came Rico Carty and Ryan got him to pop up to first base, and the final batter, Hank Aaron hit a first pitch high fly ball to left and Jones got under it.

Now the Mets had won the series and were big underdogs against the star-studded, pitch-heavy, hard-hitting Baltimore Orioles, the American League champion. After losing the first game in Baltimore the Mets took game two and back at Shea they won the next three to the delight of their frantic fans who flooded the field after the final out.

In was in the fifth inning of game three when Hodges did not say anything  except time out, and just strolled out of the dugout and headed towards left field, and when he reached Jones, he told him he’s no longer in the game and the two walked back together to the dugout. Jones had made two earlier errors, and in this inning didn’t hustle to chase a fly ball that dropped into fair territory right outside the foul line, so Hodges had had enough and walked Jones out of the game.

In game five of the World Series at Shea Stadium, the clincher, Jones came to bat, and on a 2-1 pitch tried to get away from a low pitch that he claimed hit his foot, and when the home plate umpire tossed the same ball into the direction of the Mets’ dugout, Hodges grabbed it, looked at it, and walked to the plate to

show the ump the actual blur on the ball, which was followed by Jones being  awarded first base, and when Baltimore manager Earl Weaver dashed out of his dugout to protest the call, he hung around long enough, kicked some dirt at the umpire and became the first manager to be ejected from a World Series game.

Said Mets’ former right fielder Art Shamsky upon recalling this. “Gil was not a party-like person when playing ball, He did things in a serious manner and everybody respected that. He was always available before and after the game, and was always available to the press. As Krane said, without Gil we wouldn’t have won the World Series.

The late Seaver held a press conference about a decade after he retired playing for the Cincinnati Reds and then the Chicago White Sox.

“I can never say enough about Gil Hodges,” he said with emotion. “When he died in 1972, I was stunned, heart broken, so was my wife Nancy, and so was every other guy who played for him. When I first came up in ’67, he often gave me advice, always took the time in his office to speak with me, and if not for him, I probably wouldn’t have made it in the big leagues.

“And let me add that there’s no doubt he belongs in the Hall of Fame, and I wish they would vote him in and make myself and all the others who he always went to bat for happy.”

Seaver has since passed away, but southpaw Koosman, who was recently inducted into the Mets Hall of Fall, said he could never forget how Gil  conducted himself in a professional manner and always had time for everybody, plus he would often praise his players and never himself. But to us he was a miracle maker.

It was April 4th of 1972 when Hodges collapsed outside his house, hit his head on the concrete and Joan hurried to call for an ambulance, but it was too late.

That was the day after he hooked up with retired former Dodgers Steve Gavey, Ron Cey and his third base and bench coach Yogi Berra to play some golf in St. Petersburg, Fla., and after being on the course for quite some time in the hot sun, Hodges told the others he had had it for the day, and so Berra dropped him off at home.

It was shocking news that came the next day. Yogi Berra became the new Mets manager and won the 1973 pennant and lost in the World Series to the Oakland Athletics in seven games, but always paid tribute to Hodges and tried to do things the way Gil had done, and his wife, Carmen, said she had never seen him so sad because he always had great things to say about being on a staff with Mr. Hodges.

The news about Hodges’ finally making it to the most prestigious of our National Pastime honors was told to his widowed wife Joan by GIl Hodges, Jr., and he said she found a smile, nodded her head, and tears came down.

Hodges, Jr. said that his father had a chance to make it in 1993 when he was short 10 votes and Roy Campanella connected with the baseball writers and offered 11 of his own votes, but the committee informed him that he couldn’t cast his votes to someone else, and it was also past the deadline.

But this time he collected enough votes cast by the Golden Days Era committee. Yes, it was a case of later over sooner, five decades, and old timers like myself can be thankful now to have Gil Hodges enshrined in Cooperstown.

I again feel sorry for Roger Maris not getting in, and I never saw enough of Dick (or Richie) Allen, but Saturnino Orestes Armas Minoso Minoso, better know as just “Minnie,” hit over .300 eight times with the Indians and White Sox, led the American League in stolen bases three times, reached double digits in home runs almost every season, and won three Golden Gloves in left field.

He finished up or so it seemed in 1964, but he came back to the White Sox at age 50 in 1976, went 1-for-8 at bat, and played again in 1980 to give him five decades of playing pro ball. He also pitched and played second base and Chicago retired his No. 9 in 1983 not knowing he’d be back.

Olivia was a three-time batting average winner whose career was cut short by knee problems, but with the Minnesota Twins, he was a huge fan favorite and was equally adept in the outfield with speed and a strong throwing arm.

Kaat, a crafty right-hander, was 283-237 in 25 seasons and 16-time Golden Gloves winner who also swung a big bat and provided leadership.

Good for them and the support they’ve had until this magic moment when they made it in to the Hall of Fame.