Hodges Gil - Gil Hodges : a hall of fame life

The definitive and wonderfully told tale of a baseball icon. Mort Zachter has given Gil Hodges the biography he has long deserved.

Michael Shapiro, professor of journalism at Columbia University and author of The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers and Their Final Pennant Race Together

Whether focusing on Hodges the Hoosier, the marine on Okinawa, the home runhitting slugger, or the Brooklynite on Bedford Avenue, Mort Zachter has given us Gil, right down to the nub of his Marlboro. His mincing steps to the mound are remembered along with the candles lit in church and the day Brooklyns heart skipped a beat with his. This one spikes high into your heart; the Hodges epic is a lesson in humanity for all seasons.

Bob McGee, author of The Greatest Ballpark Ever: Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers

Zachter brings the same grace and precision to the page that Hodges brought to first base at Ebbets Field and with methodical research, insight, and pure affection gives life to the man behind the astounding stats, proving once and for all that Hodges truly belongs in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Kudos to Mort Zachter for giving a beloved Brooklyn legend his due.

Marty Markowitz, former Brooklyn Borough president

In these pages you understand how Hodges defined what it meant to be a role model in a golden age.

Tom Verducci, senior writer for Sports Illustrated

Gil Hodges

Gil Hodges

A Hall of Fame Life

Mort Zachter

University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln and London

2015 by Mort Zachter

Cover image Bettman/Corbis Images

Author photo Nurit Zachter

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953036

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

For another team player,

my wife, Nurit

is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

Pericles

only a good player and manager; he was a special human being.

Sandy Koufax

Contents

His Reputation Preceded Him

.

Gil Hodges stepped out of the Mets dugout holding a shoe-polish-stained baseball in his right hand.

It was a chilly October afternoon in New York and the Mets manager wore a dark-blue baseball jacket over his uniform. Although the familiar No. 14 that had been stitched onto his jersey ever since his playing days in Ebbets Field wasnt visible to the standing-room-only crowd at Shea Stadium watching the fifth game of the 1969 World Series, it made no difference. If, like Neil Armstrong, who that past July took one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, Hodges had been wearing a NASA space suit complete with helmet and darkened visor, the fans wouldve still recognized him.

He had been, wrote Roger Angell, popular ballplayer in the major leagues, and although Ebbets Field had crumbled beneath an iron wrecking ball almost a decade before, whenever Hodges stepped onto a baseball field he fortified fading memories of warm summer days when Brooklyn was the best the National League had to offer and no one had yet heard of the New York Metropolitans.

Hodges headed toward home plate slowly in that funny, pigeon-toed walk he hadramrod-straight like John Wayne in The Searchersbut with surprisingly small strides for a man who stood almost six feet two inches tall. His toes touched the ground first, then his instep, and finally the heel of his spikes. A little over a year after surviving his first heart attack, Hodges looked much older than forty-five. Yet, there was still a grace and athleticism in his bearing that exuded a sense of confidence and power.

excited... Gil remained calm, recalled his best player, Tom Seaver. The tenser the situation, the more he concentrated. He never wavered, never came within a mile of panic, always observing, always maneuvering, always thinking.

running in his veins, said Mets catcher J. C. Martin.

That morning, Hodges had ride for the outgoing and personable Bob, who would have loved discussing that afternoons game.

Gils silence didnt surprise her a bit. The defining experience of his formative years, surviving the savagery of Okinawa during World War II, had only deepened an inborn solemnity. The defining experience of his final years, that afternoon stroll to home plate was the high point of his professional baseball career. Yet, to him, it wasnt life and death, just a ball game. To a deeply religious man like Gil Hodges, there were more important things.