The chapter of Roger Kahn’s seminal baseball masterpiece “The Boys of Summer season” dedicated to Gil Hodges is titled merely, and appropriately: “One Who Stayed in Brooklyn.” Lengthy after the Dodgers had absolutely deserted the borough, even lengthy after most aggrieved Dodgers followers had moved on, Hodges and his household stayed.
That stretch of Bedford Avenue, between Avenues L and M, is now known as Gil Hodges Means. It's a most applicable identify for each for a avenue in addition to for the explanation Hodges’ household and a good sampling of his former gamers had been gathered in Cooperstown on Sunday, on a sunny, muggy day by which Hodges was finally inducted amongst baseball’s immortals.
“Gil Hodges” is the identify on the plaque that can dangle within the museum’s hallowed halls endlessly.
But it surely was actually Gil Hodges’ Means that was being honored.
“Whenever you consider it,” Irene Hodges, Gil’s daughter, had mentioned Thursday, as she made her manner from Brooklyn to Cooperstown, beginning the lengthy cruise up Route 17. “His was such a brief life in so some ways. He handed away at 47 and he could be nearly 100 now and but folks nonetheless respect him and love him — although for 50 of these years he wasn’t round. I believe that’s a fairly superb feat for anybody.”
That was his manner: his influence on teammates. His affect on the gamers he managed. His hands-on method to guiding the Mets to unapproachable glory in 1969.
Fourteen years earlier, on a group loaded with stars, it had been Hodges who made sure Subsequent 12 months would lastly arrive in Brooklyn. It was Hodges who drove in the one two runs within the Dodgers’ 2-0 win in Sport 7, one on a single, one on a sac fly. It was Hodges in whose glove the ultimate out settled at 3:43 p.m. on Oct. 1, 1955, securing the throw from Pee Wee Reese.
When Hodges and his household returned to their two-story home, there have been lots of of Dodgers followers who’d gathered to greet them. As a result of he wasn’t only a freshly-crowned world champion. He was a Brooklynite. He was one in all them.
That was Gil Hodges’ manner.
“He was a really humble man,” Irene mentioned in her speech Sunday, talking on behalf of her father, her household, and a legion of Dodgers and Mets followers whose lives he impacted, “however he could be so proud to be right here with one of the best of one of the best in baseball.”
Early in his managing profession, with a horrible group in Washington, there got here a second of fact. He’d heard that 4 of his gamers had busted curfew. In a group assembly he informed them: “I do know this, and you realize that I do know who you might be. You’re fined $100. However I don’t wish to embarrass anybody as a result of I do know a few of you might be married. I've an outdated cigar field on my desk. Put the cash in there.”
When Hodges flipped open the field, he discovered $700. Hodges could have been a younger skipper. However even then his gamers didn’t wish to disappoint.
That was Gill Hodges’ manner.
It was Father Herbert Raymond, a 44-year outdated parish priest at St. Francis Xavier Church on Sixth Avenue in Park Slope, who saved selecting up the newspapers within the unseasonably heat spring of 1953, studying field scores, seeing Hodges’ batting common plummet — this seven months after Hodges had gone 0-for-21 within the ’52 World Sequence
One particularly steamy Sunday, in lieu of a sermon, Father Raymond informed his congregation: “Go dwelling, maintain the Commandments. And say a prayer for Gil Hodges.”
Quickly thereafter, Hodges’ bat perked up. Does prayer assist? Hodges hit .302 in ’53, with 31 homers and 122 RBIs. It definitely didn’t harm.
That was Gil Hodges’ manner.
The plaque that can dangle within the Corridor referred to as him a “foundational cornerstone” of the Boys of Summer season Dodgers. He was that, precisely, together with Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella and Jackie Robinson, all of whom preceded Hodges to Cooperstown and who should now really feel full once more.
“Gil,” Robinson mentioned after Hodges’ passing in 1972, “was the easiest of us.”
That, too, was Gil Hodges’ manner.
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