Gil Hodges: The Brooklyn Bums, The Miracle Mets, and The Extraordinary Life of a Baseball Legend by Tom Clavin and Danny Peary (review)

Jackie Robinson was the motive force of the Boys of Summer, but Gil Hodges, as Robinson said, was its core, the solid center from which power radiated. During the 1950s, Duke Snider and Gil Hodges led Major League Baseball in total home runs and runs batted in. They dominated the decade, just as their team, the Dodgers, dominated their opponents, winning five National League pennants and World Series titles in 1955 and 1959. From 1949 to 1959, Hodges averaged 30 home runs and 101 rbi per year; he hit 30 homers in five straight seasons, and had eleven successive years with 20 or more, tying Mel Ott’s nl record; he smacked 14 grand slams, good for fifteenth place on the all-time list. In 1954, Hodges hit 19 sacrifice flies, still an mlb record, and he was arguably the best defensive first baseman of his era, receiving the first three gold gloves at that position.

A major biography of Hodges is long overdue, and Clavin and Peary’s Gil Hodges provides extensively researched documentation and cogent arguments for Hodges’s inclusion in the Hall of Fame. It is not, however, an elegant read; its prose is utilitarian, and the narration occasionally rambles. The authors sometimes recount five anecdotes where one would suffice, particularly in describing Hodges’s Indiana boyhood. Just about everyone who knew him is called upon to relate how nice, wholesome, and reserved young Gil was, and his athletic prowess in high school basketball and summer baseball are described in detail. Nevertheless, a nostalgic portrait of small-town Americana during the Great Depression does emerge, and the stoic, moral character of the mature Hodges is clearly shown in its incipient form.

In 1943, a Dodgers scout sent the nineteen-year-old Hodges to a tryout camp in Olean, New York. Branch Rickey, inventor of the farm system and newly appointed president of the Dodgers, understood that young men would soon be drafted, but signed as much raw talent as possible so that the Dodgers’ farm system would be well-stocked at war’s end. His wide net captured Carl Erskine, Duke Snider, Ralph Branca, and Hodges. Jake Pitler, for many years the Dodgers’ first-base coach, watched Hodges hit and sent him to Brooklyn. There, Rickey signed Hodges for one thousand dollars; five hundred down and five hundred when he returned from the Marines. Gil later commented that “Mr. Rickey was not taking any chances” (40).

Hodges learned catching from Mickey Owen on the 1943 Dodgers, joined the Marines that October, fought in Saipan and Okinawa, and returned safely in late 1945 to claim his additional five hundred dollars. He never discussed his military service, but he absorbed the Corps’ mystique of obedience. Hank Bauer was considered a disciplinarian as a result of his Marine Corps service, but Hodges as a manager was called the D.I. (“Drill Instructor”) by some of his Washington players.

Gil spent 1946 in the minors at Newport News; by 1947, he was the Dodgers’ third-string catcher. His big break came in 1948, after Rickey traded Eddie Stanky to the Braves, and moved Jackie Robinson from first base to second, his natural position. Manager Leo Durocher then installed Hodges at first base, clearing the catcher’s position for rookie Roy Campanella. With Reese at short, Furillo in right, and Snider in center, the Boys of Summer were largely in place.

Clavin and Peary narrate Hodges’s story by recounting the Dodgers’ exploits from 1948 until 1961, when Hodges was drafted by the expansion Mets. This material has been mined before—after all, the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers are one of baseball’s iconic teams; their World Series battles against the Yankees in 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, and 1956 are legendary. Nevertheless, the focus on Hodges reveals the...