Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,685

This is the grave of Gil Hodges.

Born in 1924 in Princeton, Indiana, Hodges grew up in the working class, the son of a coal miner. The family moved to Petersburg, Indiana when Hodges was a kid and he became a star athlete, in many sports, but especially baseball. Interestingly, he was more interested in coaching than playing and kind of always was that way. In 1941, the Detroit Tigers offered him a contract, but he turned that down so he could attend St. Joseph University in Philadelphia on a scholarship and prepare for a life of coaching. I assume that he was a practical kid who figured that the major leagues was a dream and he wanted to have steady work through his life, which is a reasonable position for a working class kid to take. That’s strictly conjecture on my part though. He played both hoops and baseball there. But in 1943, now really a rising star, he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Hodges played in one game for the Dodgers that year and then joined the Marines for the rest of World War II. He was an anti-aircraft gunner in the 16th Anti-Aircraft Victory Battalion and received a Bronze Star for his service, so this was a real soldier here. The Marines discharged Hodges in 1946. He went back and played minor league ball that season and got his next call-up in 1947, playing catcher. That didn’t last long.

The Dodgers moved him to first base full time in 1949. In truth, he was always a terrible defender. But he sure developed more than enough power to make up for it. He was terrible in 1947, hitting .156 in 77 at bats. But in 1948, he took a nice step forward and in 1949, became a slugger, hitting 23 homers, driving in 115 runs, and making the first of his 8 All-Star teams. He remained pretty much the same player for the next decade, being a very good, but not great, player through 1959. The only major category he ever led a league was 99 strikeouts in 1951 (can you imagine someone leading the league with 91 strikeouts today in Three True Outcome hell????). Most years, he would smack between 25 and 30 homers, but he did cross the 40 barrier twice, including a career high 42 home runs in 1954. He never had a top 5 MVP season, but he did have 8 top 20 MVP seasons. Somehow, he even won three Gold Gloves late in his career, though the advanced metrics still show him as a below-average defender. According to Baseball Reference’s WAR metric, Hodges’ best season was in 1954, when he hit .304/373/579 with the 42 homers, 130 RBIs, and 106 runs. That was good for 6.2 WAR, which is a very solid year. Incidentally, that year was the first year that statistics for sacrifice flies were kept and Hodges still holds the all-time single season record with 19. Whether that’s a major category or not, I leave it up to you.

Hodges played for the Dodgers through the 1961 year, moving with the team to Los Angeles. In 1962, the Dodgers did not protect Hodges for the expansion draft for the brand new New York Mets and they selected him. He was a good leadership pick at the very least, though his skills were eroding pretty fast by that time. He wasn’t very good in 62 and started a few games in 1963. Then, the Washington Senators traded for Hodges in order that he become their manager. He immediately retired and did not do the Pete Rose thing, putting his aging body out there to expand his record sheet. When he retired, he was the all-time leader for both grand slams and had just lost the all time NL homer leader for right-handers, with 370. He held it for about three years, but Willie Mays passed him in 1963, just before his retirement.

Now, the Senators were a pretty bad franchise. Hodges actually led them to some respectable seasons, but that was as good as it got. Hodges jumped at the chance to move to the Mets in 1967, in part because his family stayed in New York when he was in Washington. This meant Hodges managed the Miracle Mets of 1969, which really was a miracle season since the team was not that good before or after that amazing year.

Unfortunately, Hodges was a chain smoker, that got to his heart, and he died in 1972 during spring training of a heart attack, shortly after playing golf. He was 47 years old.

Hodges was a long a runner-up for the Hall of Fame. Critics noted that his numbers were far short of every other first baseman in there, plus while he was a very consistent player for a long time, he wasn’t ever really better than that. People liked him though, so that got him some support. He did not get in during the normal voting process. He came up several times before the Veterans Committee. He finally sneaked into the HOF during the 2022 Veterans vote, winning precisely the necessary 12 of the 16 votes.

Gil Hodges is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.

If you would like this series to visit other first basemen, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. According to Baseball Reference’s JAWS stat, Hodges is the 41st best first basemen of all time. That makes sense. For context in more contemporary players that I remember, that puts him just behind Carlos Delgado, Adrian Gonzalez, and the titanically overrated Don Mattingly, and just ahead of Mark Grace and Anthony Rizzo. Ed Konetchy, who played for a series of NL teams from the late 00s to the early 20s and who is 42nd all time, is in Fort Worth, Texas. Jack Fournier, who also played for a bunch of teams in almost the exact same time frame and who is 44th all time, is in Aberdeen, Washington. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.