sign in sign up
<<
Home , Gil Hodges

HODGESGil GIL HODGES WAS HIS FIRST LOVE

RANDY MILLS

UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED, IMAGES COURTESY OAKLAND CITY UNIVERSITY

4 I TRACES I Spring 2020 he sum of a professional athlete’s career can often create an illusion, leaving little or no hint about moments of crisis. The story of Hoosier great Gil Hodges is a prime example. Hodges Taccomplished many amazing achievements during his eighteen years playing professional baseball for the and and finishing with the . Hodges a solid .273 and blasted 370 home runs in his career. His fourteen grand slams place him tied for sixteenth on the all-time list, and he is only one of eighteen major league players ever to hit four home runs in a single game. Hodges was even tougher in the field, being considered one of the best defensive first basemen ever. He is best remembered, however, for managing the “Miracle Mets” to victory over the in the 1969 —a feat Newsweek magazine called “the most improbable sports event” of the 1960s.

Hodges’s journey to baseball great- The coaching angle came naturally in basketball. The latter became the game ness was not always an easy one. There enough. Hodges was a gifted athlete who Hodges thought he would like to coach were even a few years, during the late enjoyed helping younger kids with devel- in high school and maybe even play as a 1940s, when it looked as if he might fol- oping their sports skills. By his final year professional. low another vocation. It is an interesting in high school, it seemed a sure thing he Basketball was all but a religion in coincidence that a young Hodges and would go to college on an athletic scholar- Indiana during Hodges’s time, and the tiny Oakland City College in Indiana ship and, perhaps, even play in a profes- muscular, hard-nosed youth played the converged at this juncture, as both were sional sport. Ironically, Petersburg High game very well, bringing him some posi- enduring a difficult time. School did not field a baseball team, so he tive attention. He dribbled well with either Besides Hodges’s concern about his honed his skills playing sandlot and park- hand and was difficult to defend, bringing poor first year showing for the Brooklyn league baseball and later getting recogni- the ball down the floor like a guard. While Dodgers, his decision to enroll at Oakland tion and interest from a professional scout his outside shot was excellent, he could City in the winter term of 1947 was also while playing as a teenager in American also post up under the basket, where his driven by earlier events in his life. Gil’s Legion baseball after his senior year. Older strength and quickness enabled him to father, Charlie Hodges, had worked over brother Bob, however, was considered the control the game. A local paper reported the years in several coal mines in southern better baseball player, perhaps causing at the end of Hodges’s senior season: Indiana and had suffered more injuries Gil to sometimes have a lack of passion “Petersburg possesses one of the great in mining accidents than most. He often for the game and to be more interested players of the present cage campaign. He is took Gil, and Gil’s older brother, Robert, to these mines to remind them how hard and dangerous the work was, telling his sons they would never labor in a coal mine. Charlie died at the age of fifty-seven after being disabled in a mining accident in 1957. Gil was also a child and adolescent during the Great Depression, an event that left many forever worrying about having financial security. As a high school student, Hodges was very bright and hardworking, and he reasoned that becoming a teacher and high-school coach would be the best route for keeping of the mines and securing a good job. Oakland City College’s 1946–47 basketball team led by Coach Delbert Disler, a World War II veteran. Because of the war, the school shuttered its sports program in 1942.

TRACES I Spring 2020 I 5 GIL HODGES

G. Hodges, ace forward. Hodges is a fine Training Corps program. That summer he returned from the military. Hodges passer, excellent shot and guides his team Hodges played baseball in the Indianapolis got in to play one game in the big leagues with poise not usually found in a high Amateur Baseball Association league for late that summer before he was off to the school athlete.” the P. R. Mallory Company, returning to Marine Corps. He did not play especially The summer after Hodges graduated, Saint Joseph for his sophomore year. Skip- well in the game and once more doubted he played well enough in the American Le- ping football, he got to play in the game his chances of making a living as a baseball gion state baseball tournament to receive he loved, basketball, at the varsity level. player. Meanwhile, he was destined to an offer from the in its Big and rawboned, Hodges both handled lose three of his prime years serving in the minor-league system. After discussing the the ball in the backcourt and aggressively Pacific theater during the war. While he offer with his father, Hodges decided his grabbed rebounds Even after he finally never shared much information about his skills probably were not good enough to moved to baseball as a career, he always time overseas, those who knew him best make a living at that level of professional touted the idea of playing in a basketball thought him much more somber when he baseball and chose to accept a scholarship league in the winter to keep in top shape. returned home. at Saint Joseph College, a Catholic school Hodges’s sophomore year basketball per- While Hodges faced several twists and in Rensselaer, Indiana. Here he hoped to formance at Saint Joseph was lackluster, turns in his young life in the pre- and post- fulfill his dream of becoming a teacher and perhaps impacted by the coming war and World War II years, tiny Oakland City basketball coach. the fact that several players had already College faced its own critical problems Hodges entered college in the fall of dropped out and joined the military. during this same period. For years, the 1939, but as a freshman he was not al- Hodges’s ROTC commitment meant college had produced the great majority of lowed to play varsity basketball. He did he would be called up by the Marine teachers, school administrators, and pub- have an immediate impact on the varsity Corps in the fall of 1943. Meanwhile, lic-school coaches in southwest Indiana. football and baseball teams while also join- he played baseball in Indianapolis again Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s the ing the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Officer that summer, performing so well he was popular area college also had a lively sports invited to a tryout camp in program with its teams, nicknamed the New York City for the Brook- Oaks. The college fielded successful squads lyn Dodgers. Hodges’s wife, in basketball, football, baseball, and track, Joan, related in 2012 that her playing smaller colleges in the state, such husband was quite surprised at as Hanover and Evansville Colleges, along the offer, thinking he was not with such larger schools as Indiana State good enough to play profes- Teachers College (today Indiana State sional baseball. “Basketball was University) and Ball State. This golden his sport,” she recalled. “Gil age abruptly ended with the Stock Market thought he was going to play crash and the Great Depression, and the professional basketball and school almost collapsed. In 1930 the col- then maybe coach baseball.” lege’s president, William Dearing, in an Hodges was thrilled when important announcement to the college Dodgers general and community via the school newspaper, president Branch Rickey of- lamented, “The world was never in such a fered him a $1,000 bonus to turmoil in the memory of living men. But sign, half of it to be paid when we must live and carry on. Education must

An Oakland City Oaks game in the team’s home gymnasium during the 1948–49 season.

6 I TRACES I Spring 2020 PRINCETON DAILY CLARION PRINCETON DAILY Clockwise from Top: The Oaks 1948–49 super team with future National Basketball Association player Bob Lochmeuller (front row, fourth from left) and Gil Hodges (front row, far right); The Famous Red Heads, a semiprofessional women’s team Hodges played against when he was on Oakland City’s basketball squad; and team captain Hodges with Babs Hayes, the school’s homecoming queen. Hodges shook her hand rather than give her the traditional kiss on the cheek. GIL HODGES

go forward in spite of hardships. . . . We invite the students and faculty of Oakland City College to unite in common fellow- ship of suffering.” The school was just beginning to crawl out of the lingering shadow of the De- pression in the early 1940s when the war brought another drastic drop—80 per- cent—in student enrollment in 1942. All sports programs were canceled that year for the duration of the war. Things grew so desperate that the new college president, James Cox, made a remarkable emergency announcement in the school newspaper in the fall of 1943. Responding to rumors that the long-standing institution would close, Cox said: “Administrative officials have considered the difficulties under which the college will be forced to operate if it opens this fall. However, it was felt by the administration that they owed it to the institution and to the students who plan to attend O.C.C. to not close its doors, unlike other small colleges.” Just in time, in 1946, the college’s enrollment swelled, with old and new stu- dents returning in droves, many using the GI Bill. The Oakland City College Veter- ans Association was founded in that same year and quickly grew to be the largest organization on campus. The ever-growing number of veterans were in some cases a loud, cardplaying, smoking, rough-talking lot, a new force to be absorbed into the college’s traditional conservative culture. But accommodate they did—a new recre- ational lounge was soon set up in the base- ment of the administration building where vets could smoke, talk, and play cards, and the college bought a nearby house as a residence for returning servicemen and servicewomen. Still left in tatters during this resurge of students, however, were the

ALON ALEXANDER ALON / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO college’s once proud sports programs. Hodges waits on deck for his turn at the plate during a spring training game pitting the Los The college hired U.S. Army Air Angeles Dodgers against the Boston Red Sox, circa March 1958, Vero Beach, Florida. For Corps veteran Delbert Disler as its new the 1958 season, Hodges won a for defensive excellence at first base. basketball coach in 1946 and gave him the

8 I TRACES I Spring 2020 GIL HODGES

seemingly impossible task of resurrecting enced in war. . . . If it hadn’t been for him, game plan was really his prewar one—be- the institution’s sports program. Disler, I’m sure a lot of the guys would have given come a high school teacher and coach. who was quickly given the moniker of up and quit the team and school.” Besides Oakland City’s closeness ap- “Chief,” forged ahead, putting together In October 1947 the Collegian, the pealing to Hodges, he had probably read a team of mostly returning veterans who school newspaper, announced on its sports the college’s frequently published newspa- had dropped out in 1942 to fight in the page that Disler had selected twelve players per advertisement about going to school war. The results, however, were ugly—the for his A team squad for the 1947–48 sea- there to become a teacher. This advertise- Oaks won only two out of twelve games in son. Just before the college’s first game, the ment touted the decent salary, retirement their collegiate conference that year. The sportswriter optimistically noted, “The col- benefits, and community status a teacher next year looked even rougher, with Disler lege has just about everything needed for received at that time. The piece touted putting together a tough schedule that a winning season.” As it turned out, the that the typical teacher salary was $2,500 included Indiana State and Evansville Col- reporter had been too optimistic, Oakland “for a nine-month contract.” lege, the latter an archrival before the war. City lost three out of its first four games, Oakland City records show that Even the school newspaper lamented that including an 87–36 drubbing by Indiana Hodges majored in social studies and the schedule “was pretty tough.” State. It did not help matters that fans physical education, a definite sign he At the beginning of his second year as were not showing up at the college gym to wished to teach and coach in high school. coach, Disler issued a stern warning to any cheer on the Oaks, leading the Collegian Interestingly, Collegian sportswriter, Jack players going out for basketball, explaining editor to bemoan, “There are no cheery Copeland, wrote a piece about Hodges’s that his pet peeve “was an athlete who fell yells to meet those of the opposition, and sudden appearance on the team that sug- down scholastically.” This seemed to be to spur the Oaks on to victory. There is gested he really was shifting to becoming a directed at veterans who might think they plenty of room, however, on the O. C. C. teacher and a high-school coach. “Gilbert would be getting a pass when playing for bleachers, for only a few have come to R. Hodges, of Petersburg, formerly [italics his team. As it turned out, most would. root for their team.” Another newspaper mine] with the Brooklyn Dodgers, has en- That same year the Chief was made the piece noted the chemistry of the team rolled at O. C. C.” Meanwhile, Hodges’s sponsor and faculty adviser for the school’s “was not quite right.” Something seemed presence at the first game he played as an Veterans Organization. Disler soon drew to be missing. Then, at the beginning of Oak had an immediate impact. The Colle- close to the veterans, cutting them slack if the college’s winter term, the missing piece gian reported, “Gil Hodges, the Brooklyn he thought it was needed. Returning vet- showed up. Dodger , was very much ‘the man eran and basketball player Harry Goerlitz Hodges’s first year as a major leaguer on the floor.’ Just about everything he did remembered Disler as “lots of fun, par- in 1946–47 had been underwhelming. was right. He scored when a score was ticularly when we all played poker. He was Rickey had indicated in a rather subtle needed very badly, rebounded well, and sensitive to the trauma many had experi- way that Hodges had a future in baseball manipulated the ball like a charm.” The lo- but kept him as a third-string cal paper, the Oakland City Journal, added catcher. Hodges, however, to this praise, noting, “The entire team ruminated on his dismal .156 looked very good, and it would be hard to batting average and the fact pick one player and call him the star of the he still could not hit a major- game. But if that had to be done, the vote From the beginning league curveball. Still remem- would go to Gil Hodges. He was all over of Hodges’s profes- sional baseball career, bering his father’s strict ad- the floor—working the ball in toward the local newspapers monition that his sons would basket, rebounding in amazing fashion, often carried photo- never work in the Indiana coal and coming through with a field goal or graphs touting his mines, Hodges went to plan free throw when it was needed most.” progress. This one, B, moving in with his parents Other Indiana papers carried similar from the Princeton in Petersburg, Indiana, and stories. The Kokomo Tribune declared, Daily Clarion, is from his so-so rookie season faithfully driving the fifteen “Oakland City uncovered a freshman with the Brooklyn miles each day to attend classes star in Gil Hodges, who was third string Dodgers. at Oakland City. Hodges’s new catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers last sea-

TRACES I Spring 2020 I 9 GIL HODGES

son.” The event even made news across the country. Under the bold heading, “Dodg- er’s Catcher Paces Cage Victory,” the Des Moines Register reported, “Gil Hodges of Left: A page from the Petersburg, Ind., third-string catcher for Brooklyn Dodgers’ the Brooklyn Dodgers last summer and 1951 newsletter, Line Drives, shows how now a freshman at Oakland City College, the six-foot, two-inch led the Oaks to a 66–56 victory.” tall Hodges stretches The initial excitement did not last long, to haul in throws as the Oaks proceeded to lose their next while holding down three games. The losses, however, were to first base for his team. Opposite, Below: strong teams: Indiana Central, Evansville (left) College, and Shurtleff College. Hodges celebrates with team- continued to perform well, leading the mates Preacher Roe Oaks in scoring in the Shurtleff game and and Hodges following making key plays in the others. Then came the team’s 1–0 victory what seemed a turning point in the season. over the New York At the Oakland City basketball homecom- Yankees in the second game of the 1949 ing, the entire starting five suddenly jelled World Series. Roe as a team, toppling Centre College 70–53. pitched a nine-inning In the next game, the Oaks lost by three shutout and Hodges to a strong Transylvania College squad. drove in Robinson for Hodges was the game’s leading scorer. the only of the He then rallied his team in the last three PHOTO STOCK ALAMY RLFE PIX / game. minutes of the next game to lead the Oaks of college life, his all-around presence on easily wore a player out. In one instance, over Hanover, 51–47, the Indianapolis Star the basketball floor and the Oaks’ grow- he played with an independent all-star Press noting, “Oakland City’s Gil Hodges, ing successes lifted the once-struggling team against a well-known women’s travel- the Brooklyn Dodger, hit two quick campus. As more wins came, so did the ing team, “The Famous Red Head Profes- baskets, to put the Oaks ahead.” The Col- fans and their enthusiasm, the latter aspect sionals.” Bud Miskell, sportswriter for the legian gleefully pointed out, “The Panthers noted by the editor of the Collegian, who Princeton Daily Clarion, thought Hodges seemed to think they had the game won wrote, “Keep up the good work fans.” an amazing workhorse, “playing the past even before they came down, but, despite With four games left in the season, the basketball season with Miller’s Tavern. a hard-fought battle, they were speedily school newspaper reported that Hodges One game wasn’t enough to keep Gil in disillusioned by Coach Disler’s boys.” was the leading scorer for the Oaks. The training however so many times during Perhaps the Oaks’ and Hodges’s tough- team would go on to win its last five the week he would fill in for several other est loss that year, by a single point, was to games, for a final record of 9–10, and independent fives. Many weeks he played a strong Franklin College team. Hodges Hodges would be applauded for his scor- as many as five games.” Miskell did not almost pulled the game out of the fire. The ing, as well as his “magnificent” floor play mention Hodges’s collegiate endeavors. Journal reported, “With only a few sec- and rebounding. This level of play is made All of the games Hodges played, onds remaining to be played in the game more astounding by a chance discovery. independent and college, may help explain and the Oaks behind 47–42, Hodges hit Perhaps one of the most interesting the grades he made at Oakland City dur- two long one-handed shots from out in finds in this research involved the amazing ing the winter term he attended in the the floor to close the gap to one point. The number of independent basketball games 1947–48 college basketball season: English Oaks got one last shot, one that rimmed in Hodges played his first season at Oakland 122, C; History 234, C; Sociology 101, and out when the gun sounded.” Hodges City for the Miller’s Tavern team out of C; and Physical Education 202, A. Not again led the Oaks in scoring in the loss. Princeton, Indiana. Such independent surprisingly, Disler taught the physical- While Hodges settled into the rhythms games were fast-paced, rough contests that education class.

10 I TRACES I Spring 2020 GIL HODGES

Hodges, along with Disler and in great shape for spring training. The newspaper reports, noted in June 1948 the other Oaks basketball players, had article noted: that Hodges’s job at the catcher position wrought a subtle miracle in the 1947–48 might be in danger. He did so by quoting Gil Hodges, Oakland City College season, resurrecting the school’s basketball junior, who left at the end of the winter Rickey, who stated that the team would culture. The college gym, with just a hand- term to resume playing professional keep Hodges, “if he was ready to hit curve ful of quiet spectators at the beginning of baseball, is now the first string catcher ball pitching.” Then, in July, the school pa- the year, saw a full house, with boister- for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Follow- per reported that Hodges had been moved ous, cheering fans by the season’s end. ing recent workouts, , to first base by the Dodgers, a position However, no one knew for sure if Hodges Dodgers manager, praised Hodges at which he would eventually thrive. The would continue working on his degree the highly and stated that he might start Collegian’s sports editor, however, must the season with him as regular catcher. next year. In the spring of 1948, an article have felt something was still not right, The Dodgers are on their way back to appeared in the Collegian that gave some Brooklyn via Florida, where they had predicting Hodges would be back in the hint to the possibility that Hodges might a nine day tour scheduled. winter for the next Oakland City basket- still be in the running as a professional ball season. baseball player. Certainly, all his playing Hodges’s sports career was of great Hodges 1948 baseball season was basketball in Indiana meant he came back interest to Oaks basketball fans. The indeed a mixed bag. At the beginning Collegian sportswriter, following national

TRACES I Spring 2020 I 11 GIL HODGES

there was tremendous pressure, as Dodger manager Leo Durocher announced, “I said the first day of spring training Gil Hodges would be my . . . . No first baseman in the league can replace Hodges if he hits.” The season started out well enough and kept getting better. The Indiana native had the third highest num- Left: Hodges became manger ber of home runs in the majors and played of the New York Mets in 1968, first base with amazing finesse, as if he had leading the team to a World Series played the position forever. Then Septem- victory the next year over the favored Baltimore Orioles. Before ber came and his batting average plum- managing the Mets, he served meted. At an end of the 1948 baseball five seasons as the manager of the season, the Dodgers emphasized that the Washington Senators. Below: New team would be looking for a first baseman manager Hodges graced the cover who could hit, and Hodges returned to of the Mets’ 1968 yearbook. Oakland City that fall to sign up for more classes and to play another year of basket- ball for Disler. Becoming a teacher and coach was still a real possibility. If Hodges harbored any hopes of playing professional basketball after his 1947–48 successes with the Oaks, those hopes were surely tempered by the team’s 1948–49 basketball season. The Oaks’ previously fruitful year had attracted a bumper crop of new and solid recruits, including the one thing the team had been missing the year before, a big man with AND MUSEUM OF FAME BASEBALL HALL NATIONAL COURTESY strong scoring skills to match Hodges’s ing her in-laws to suggest she tone down rebounding and ball-handling abilities. her comments to game officials whenever Disler had brought in just the player with they made calls against her husband. An-

Elberfeld, Indiana’s lanky six foot-five other change from the year before was that PHOTO STOCK ALAMY RLFE PIX / Bob Lochmueller. The gifted Lochmueller Hodges played little, if any, independent as the team captain. One iconic event would later transfer to the University of basketball. Joan remembered the year as occurred that is often mentioned about Louisville and would have a short career in one of the most pleasant of their marriage. Hodges’s time at Oakland City. At the the National Basketball Association. Despite being loaded with solid play- homecoming game his last year, Hodges, The 1948–49 season was still made ers, Disler’s squad lost its first two games, as team captain, was to place the tiara on enjoyable for Hodges, however, by an but roared back to win nine games in a the head of the homecoming queen, Babs event that took the college community by row, ending the season with one of the Hayes, and give her a kiss on the cheek. surprise—his marriage to Brooklyn native best Oaks campaigns ever with a record of Instead, Hodges shook her hand. Joan Lombardi in late November, an event 13–5. Lochmueller ran away with the scor- Just as the Oaks’ season ended, Hodges announced on national news by reporter ing title, Hodges notching fourth place. received some good news. Rickey traveled Walter Winchell. The couple moved into a Still Hodges was often recognized for to nearby Evansville to personally talk small apartment at the edge of the campus, his rugged rebounding and “exceptional about the terms of Hodges’s next contract and Joan soon became her husband’s big- defensive” play. His overall leadership was with the Dodgers. Hodges, after signing, gest, and often, loudest fan, the latter caus- further recognized when he was chosen left immediately for spring training, the

12 I TRACES I Spring 2020 GIL HODGES

college letting him complete his classes jor leagues and not have to worry about classes, and had incomplete grades for “through correspondence.” finishing a college degree—that is, if his Education 223 and Geography 102. His Hodges would once again be the hitting improved. A headline that summer time at the Hoosier college, however, was Dodgers’ first baseman, and it was ru- in the Princeton, Indiana, newspaper told not wasted. It gave Hodges the opportu- mored his pay surpassed $10,000, several the tale: “Gil Hodges Now Hitting .324.” nity to play basketball, a game that was his times more than the $2,500 he might Hodges’s final grades at Oakland City first love, while also trying to figure out his have earned as a high-school teacher. Such suggested his baseball success was probably future. In the process, he made important a contract also greatly reassured Hodges a good thing. He received a C in His- contributions to the sports culture there, that he would likely remain in the ma- tory 121, a B in three physical-education helping, along with Disler, to resurrect a sports program that had been completely shut down by the loss of so many students during World War II. Just as important, from the two years that Hodges played would come many successful teachers, coaches, and administrators for Indiana and regional schools. It is a forgotten story that deserves to be remembered. An Indiana and Midwest historian and author, Randy Mills has written more than eighty articles for professional journals and nine books on several historical subjects. In 2018 he was the recipient of the Indiana Historical Society’s Dorothy Riker Hoosier Historian Award. In November 2019 Rose- Dog Books released Mills’s latest work, An Almost Perfect Season, A Father and Son and a Golden Age of Small-Town High School Basketballt COURTESY NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM OF FAME BASEBALL HALL NATIONAL COURTESY A 1956 photograph shows Hodges relaxing with his family at their Brooklyn home. The family includes Barbara, four, front, and from left: Cindy, age nine; Irene, fourteen; Gilly, fifteen; and Jean Hodges. Gilly, a first baseman like his father, played on his high school team.

FOR FURTHER READING Amoruso, Marino. Gil Hodges: The Quiet Man. Middlebury, VT: Paul S. Erikson Publisher, 1991. | Clavin, Tom, and Danny Peary. Gil Hodges, The Brooklyn Bums, The Miracle Mets, and the Extraordinary Life of a Baseball Legend. New York: Penguin Books, 2012. | Mills, Randy. Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve: The History of Oakland City University 1950–2002. Poplar Bluff, MO: Stinson Press, 2002. | Schrijvers, Peter.The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in the Pacific during WWII. New York: New York University Press, 2005.

TRACES I Spring 2020 I 13